Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Mamdani Wins The New York Primaries + Defending Pluralism At A Time Of Polarization

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Full Episode - Mamdani Wins The New York Primaries + Defending Pluralism At A Time Of Polarization · The Chuck ToddCast

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Speaker 1: vary and rates may vary. Hello thereon, Welcome to the
1:47
Speaker 1: Wednesday edition of the Chuck Podcast, which also means it's
1:51
Speaker 1: a day after a primary night, and oh what a
1:54
Speaker 1: primary night it was. Have do we officially have a
2:00
Speaker 1: left wing tea party? Is that what has started as
2:04
Speaker 1: the DSA the Democratic Socialists of America, Have they become
2:09
Speaker 1: to the Democrats with the Tea Party? Beginning in twenty ten,
2:12
Speaker 1: became to the Republicans, which of course culminated into the
2:15
Speaker 1: nomination of Donald Trump by twenty sixteen. That's the open question.
2:20
Speaker 1: I'm going to dig into that obviously in a few minutes.
2:22
Speaker 1: New York City being the center of the political universe
2:26
Speaker 1: on Tuesday Night, I also have a few other things.
2:32
Speaker 1: My interview is with the mayor of Voklahoma City. It's
2:35
Speaker 1: David Hole. I've had him on before and we've talked
2:38
Speaker 1: a lot about open primaries and about the sort of
2:40
Speaker 1: the polarization issue. He did an excellent speech. He got
2:46
Speaker 1: an award at the Howard Baker School at the University
2:50
Speaker 1: of Tennessee, and he shared his speech with me, and
2:52
Speaker 1: I thought it was an excellent speech because it wasn't
2:54
Speaker 1: a typical just sort of I'm the mayor Voklahoma City,
2:56
Speaker 1: and let me tell you you know, let me you
2:59
Speaker 1: know ten you know the Bakers School has something to
3:02
Speaker 1: do with Oklahoma City, and tell you about Oklahoma City.
3:04
Speaker 1: That isn't that what a speech was about. His speech
3:06
Speaker 1: was about civics and the importance of pluralism and why
3:12
Speaker 1: sort of America doesn't work without it, and maybe the
3:17
Speaker 1: name itself. Maybe it's too political science y of a term,
3:20
Speaker 1: but it's sort of like, it feels like we have
3:24
Speaker 1: an entire new couple of generations, frankly of Americans who
3:28
Speaker 1: don't understand that our politics is not designed for anybody
3:32
Speaker 1: to win everything that they want all the time. That
3:35
Speaker 1: we live in a pluralistic society, which means there's going
3:38
Speaker 1: to be plenty of times where we'll never agree on
3:42
Speaker 1: certain things. But we've got to figure out how to function,
3:45
Speaker 1: and we've come up with this system, this political system
3:49
Speaker 1: that essentially gives the majority a say, the majority. You know,
3:54
Speaker 1: we find out what the majority is, and anybody can
3:56
Speaker 1: create a majority. You may think you know what a
4:00
Speaker 1: majority is in some community, but somebody may campaign and
4:03
Speaker 1: create a new majority. But that's kind of how we've
4:06
Speaker 1: decided how to do this. But a lot of people
4:09
Speaker 1: have forgotten that after they've gotten elected, that they somehow
4:13
Speaker 1: have to be representative of the people that they didn't
4:17
Speaker 1: that didn't support them, And so we've gotten I think
4:20
Speaker 1: this is why our politics feel so broken, as we
4:22
Speaker 1: have too many people elected who believe their job is
4:25
Speaker 1: only to represent their activist base or the activists that
4:28
Speaker 1: got them there. And that they have no interest in
4:31
Speaker 1: in sort of governing for the rest of us. So anyway,
4:39
Speaker 1: I just thought it was a good discussion for us
4:41
Speaker 1: to have, and I think you'll enjoy it, especially if
4:45
Speaker 1: you are into political reform. And I can tell you
4:49
Speaker 1: that Mayor Hole is and so am I. I also
4:52
Speaker 1: have my top five list and this one. Yes there's
4:56
Speaker 1: a Reflecting Pool connection to it, but it's my the
5:01
Speaker 1: five best places to visit d C the first time
5:05
Speaker 1: you come to visit Washington. That that I recommend that
5:11
Speaker 1: is Reflecting Pool adjacent. It is Lincoln Memorial adjacent, it
5:15
Speaker 1: is Washington Monument adjacent, but it is neither of those
5:21
Speaker 1: of those sites. But since we're talking a lot about
5:25
Speaker 1: tourist attractions in DC, I thought this would be a
5:27
Speaker 1: good time to do a top five list that way.
5:30
Speaker 1: And then, of course a bunch of questions. But let's look,
5:33
Speaker 1: you know, as the movie said about last night, let's
5:36
Speaker 1: talk about last night. Obviously, the big story, as I
5:40
Speaker 1: previewed for you before, was we were trying to find
5:46
Speaker 1: out was mom Donnie's election of Fluke or not. And
5:48
Speaker 1: I think we now know in New York City it
5:50
Speaker 1: was no Fluke. What you see happening in New York City.
5:54
Speaker 1: Is a new Democratic coalition, a new king in town. Right, Mom,
5:59
Speaker 1: it's the Donnie machine. He targeted three races and he
6:03
Speaker 1: went three and zero. You know, he did better than
6:07
Speaker 1: Donald Trump did on Tuesday night. Right, Donald Trump had
6:11
Speaker 1: to endorse two candidates in a two person race in
6:13
Speaker 1: order to get a victory in the South Carolina governor's race.
6:16
Speaker 1: That's not what mom, Donnie did.
6:18
Speaker 2: He went out. He went out on a lim.
6:19
Speaker 1: In some cases, he challenged the New York City Democratic establishment.
6:24
Speaker 1: He challenged sitting Democratic member of Congress and the chairman
6:27
Speaker 1: of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. He got behind somebody who
6:32
Speaker 1: was challenging the sitting borough president of Brooklyn.
6:36
Speaker 2: So this.
6:40
Speaker 1: The folks that you know, and yes, this is New
6:43
Speaker 1: York City and it is not. I'm not here to
6:46
Speaker 1: tell you I have no idea whether this is going
6:48
Speaker 1: to travel outside of New York City. That's going to be.
6:51
Speaker 1: That's a one hundred million dollar question, or a two
6:53
Speaker 1: hundred and eighteen House folk question, or a fifty Senate
6:56
Speaker 1: seat plus one question. Right, does the DSA travel positively
7:01
Speaker 1: or negatively outside of New York City? And we're going
7:04
Speaker 1: to get some new tests. We're going to There's a
7:07
Speaker 1: you know, probably the biggest test that the progressive left
7:10
Speaker 1: is going to take place in that Michigan Senate primary
7:13
Speaker 1: in early August. If you have, if you suddenly have
7:19
Speaker 1: a blue wave that elects a progressive senator in Michigan
7:24
Speaker 1: and abdu Lsied who was explicitly pretty anti Israel, and
7:30
Speaker 1: you have candidates that win that would be considered part
7:37
Speaker 1: of the squad sort of a progressive you know, the
7:39
Speaker 1: squad started out as four members and now suddenly it
7:42
Speaker 1: could be a twenty you know, fifteen to twenty member
7:46
Speaker 1: deep organization. And it was you know, the Freedom Caucus
7:50
Speaker 1: essentially was born out of the Tea Party and made
7:54
Speaker 1: governing when the Republicans were in charge quite difficult. The
7:58
Speaker 1: progressives have not put the Democratic leadership in the same
8:05
Speaker 1: vice scripts that the Freedom Caucus and some on the
8:08
Speaker 1: far right have done to the Republican leadership. I have
8:12
Speaker 1: a feeling that's about to change because remember where this happened.
8:17
Speaker 1: This happened in New York City, and the Democratic Party
8:20
Speaker 1: in Congress is led not by one New York City
8:22
Speaker 1: Democrat but by two New York City Democrats. One is
8:25
Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer, who clearly could not win. I don't know
8:32
Speaker 1: what office he could win in New York City right now.
8:36
Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer, who was a member of Congress from the
8:39
Speaker 1: New York City delegation the ninth District forever. I don't
8:44
Speaker 1: know if there's a single Democratic primary he could win
8:47
Speaker 1: in New York City, whether it was for comptroll or
8:49
Speaker 1: whether it was for mayor whether it was for Congress,
8:52
Speaker 1: whether it was whether he could carry New York City
8:54
Speaker 1: in a Democratic center primary. It is clear that his
8:58
Speaker 1: that brand of the Democratic Party is persona and on
9:01
Speaker 1: Grada New York City. When you look at the performance
9:04
Speaker 1: of a Dan Goldman, in many ways is a very
9:07
Speaker 1: mainstream liberal Democrat. His is basically his demerit is he's
9:15
Speaker 1: not anti Israel. And I say it that way because
9:22
Speaker 1: I find I, you know, I guess there are people
9:24
Speaker 1: that don't want is you know, Israel to exist on
9:29
Speaker 1: that front, But there are plenty of people who are
9:34
Speaker 1: pro Israel, who are certainly not fans of the of
9:36
Speaker 1: the BB government. But that nuance gets lost in all
9:39
Speaker 1: of this stuff. Uh, and to some voters simply supporting
9:45
Speaker 1: any aid to Israel in a congressional vote is a
9:49
Speaker 1: bridge too far for them. So I look at a
9:55
Speaker 1: Dan Goldman's performance, uh, and it look in a in
10:00
Speaker 1: another world and another era. Dane Goldman is perhaps the
10:03
Speaker 1: air apparent to Chuck Schumer, not AOCI, but trust me,
10:08
Speaker 1: AOC is the air apparent to that Senate see if
10:11
Speaker 1: she wants it. And I think the big thing, the
10:14
Speaker 1: big takeaway tonight ought to be that Chuck Schumer is
10:19
Speaker 1: not going to win another election in New York. The
10:22
Speaker 1: question is whether he decides to run one more time
10:26
Speaker 1: in New York and try to play that out given
10:32
Speaker 1: his long career, given I don't Here's the thing. I've
10:37
Speaker 1: given up trying to think logically about this. I think
10:41
Speaker 1: aging politicians are like aging athletes. They cannot They don't
10:48
Speaker 1: think logically. They don't see around corners. They have to
10:53
Speaker 1: experience decline. They have to actually experience it. They have
11:00
Speaker 1: to experience the physical inability. Right, Serena Williams is going
11:04
Speaker 1: back out and played tennis one more time until father
11:07
Speaker 1: time says, no, you know, you're just not going to
11:09
Speaker 1: win these these these matches. Any Lebron James is not
11:13
Speaker 1: walking away next year, not you know, He's going to
11:17
Speaker 1: just like it. Just the most successful athletes don't want
11:21
Speaker 1: to walk away, and the most successful politicians have a
11:23
Speaker 1: hard time walking away, right when they've done a lot
11:26
Speaker 1: over the years. They have a hard time walking away.
11:28
Speaker 1: Joe Biden, you know, still regrets walking away from that nomination.
11:33
Speaker 1: He does and all, but it says it so should
11:40
Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer run? Of course he shouldn't. He should accept
11:43
Speaker 1: the gold watch. Democrats should thank him for his service.
11:48
Speaker 1: He has had a very successful career. He's been a
11:51
Speaker 1: very successful leader of the part. But as we know
11:58
Speaker 1: plenty of an aging politician has to wait till the
12:01
Speaker 1: voters kick him to the curve. They don't want to
12:03
Speaker 1: go first. So I you know, so I don't want
12:05
Speaker 1: to presume, but I can tell you this after watching tonight,
12:08
Speaker 1: I don't see how he can win another election. That
12:10
Speaker 1: doesn't mean he doesn't attempt to run in another election.
12:14
Speaker 1: Then there's Akeem Jeffries. Akeem Jeffries had a bad night.
12:19
Speaker 2: Now.
12:20
Speaker 1: The good news for him is he made nice with
12:22
Speaker 1: Mam Donnie and Mam Donni very quickly early on, in
12:27
Speaker 1: sort of a I think it was his own version
12:30
Speaker 1: of an olive branch with the establishment got a potential
12:34
Speaker 1: primary challenger to akiem Jeffries to back off because given
12:40
Speaker 1: what we saw tonight, would Jeffries have survived a primary?
12:45
Speaker 1: I you know, I'm I you know, I'm not gonna
12:48
Speaker 1: say the Brooklyn BP couldn't survive. The chairman of the
12:52
Speaker 1: Congressional Hispanic Caucus couldn't survive. So, you know, and more importantly,
12:58
Speaker 1: he's gonna be on the ballot again in twenty as
13:00
Speaker 1: the sitting speaker, which means, assuming Democrats do win the House,
13:07
Speaker 1: and if they win the House, they're gonna he's gonna
13:09
Speaker 1: have a growing faction of democratic socialists who are not
13:13
Speaker 1: going to be If the faction is bigger than it was,
13:19
Speaker 1: and it looks like it's going to be bigger this time,
13:23
Speaker 1: they're gonna they're going to follow the look one of
13:29
Speaker 1: the reasons why the progressive socialist movement, and I do
13:32
Speaker 1: think and I want to get to this, I think
13:33
Speaker 1: there's three buckets of Democrats at the moment.
13:38
Speaker 2: But you know, one of the.
13:41
Speaker 1: Things that was that you've you've seen is the rise
13:46
Speaker 1: of sort of this far right populist nationalist politics and
13:52
Speaker 1: the surprising success Trump has had in enacting some of
13:57
Speaker 1: that agenda and winning in places that I think we
14:02
Speaker 1: would have said ten years ago, oh, you can't go
14:04
Speaker 1: that far right and survive. Turns out in most red
14:07
Speaker 1: places you can. And I think you have a progressive
14:12
Speaker 1: wing that says, Okay, if they can do it, we
14:15
Speaker 1: can do it. And we got to stop capitulating. They
14:18
Speaker 1: finally said, told the establishment to pound sand. You know,
14:22
Speaker 1: they weren't going to rally around the next Romney anymore.
14:25
Speaker 1: They weren't going to rally around the next John McCain.
14:27
Speaker 1: They said, screw that. And I think that in many ways,
14:32
Speaker 1: the success of Trump, and it's to a point, and
14:35
Speaker 1: this would be the reminder I would say to my
14:37
Speaker 1: friend him a lot, but the perceived success of Trump,
14:40
Speaker 1: and I again I say perceived, because what is it
14:43
Speaker 1: hasn't been a successful presidency. It's been a successful political movement,
14:47
Speaker 1: but not a successful presidency. It's been a failed presidency
14:51
Speaker 1: in many respects, but the movement's been successful. And I
14:58
Speaker 1: think the I think I think they the left has
15:03
Speaker 1: learned from the right's ability to to to make life
15:11
Speaker 1: miserable for the establishment in Washington. So I will be
15:15
Speaker 1: I think that the the the this new faction of Democrats,
15:20
Speaker 1: because everybody that won Tuesday night, they're they're not in
15:24
Speaker 1: danger of losing in the general. And in fact, the
15:27
Speaker 1: even you know, the one the one candidate, the one
15:31
Speaker 1: place where one of the losers has another ballot line
15:34
Speaker 1: New York's extra ballot lines, it is Reinoso in that
15:37
Speaker 1: open seat in the Nindy of Alessisky. You know, he's
15:42
Speaker 1: he gets to keep his office as borough president, but
15:45
Speaker 1: he's got to work with Mom Donnie. He probably wants
15:47
Speaker 1: to keep that. I doubt he continues this fight. So
15:51
Speaker 1: there's going already going to be a bigger progressive coalition
15:55
Speaker 1: than there ever has been in the way that the
15:59
Speaker 1: Freedom Caucus extracted certain things before Johnson could get the
16:05
Speaker 1: votes to become speaker. I think this faction is going
16:08
Speaker 1: to learn a thing or two from the right about
16:12
Speaker 1: how to use your speaker vote as leverage, especially if
16:17
Speaker 1: the Democratic majority is under two hundred and thirty House seats,
16:21
Speaker 1: if essentially it's a nine to ten seat majority max.
16:26
Speaker 1: And when you look at this current political landscape, even
16:28
Speaker 1: in you know, there are more scenarios where Democrats win
16:33
Speaker 1: the House with less than a ten seat majority than
16:35
Speaker 1: there are that where Democrats win the House with more
16:38
Speaker 1: than a ten seat majority, and the smaller the majority,
16:41
Speaker 1: the more powerful the Democratic Socialists can become, and the
16:45
Speaker 1: more pressure that puts on Akim Jeffers. Now this happened
16:48
Speaker 1: in his backyard, right, Nancy Pelosi wasn't having this happen
16:52
Speaker 1: in her backyard. Yes, there was some progressive and socialist
16:56
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Speaker 1: is you know, you know, if you're at keep Jeffries,
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Speaker 1: what seemed like a clear path that a speakership man
19:16
Speaker 1: there are Suddenly it's it's as if the closer he gets,
19:20
Speaker 1: the more obstacles are popping up in his road. Right,
19:23
Speaker 1: look like things are going great, and then Virginia gets
19:26
Speaker 1: the rug gets pulled out from under him, and then
19:28
Speaker 1: there's and then the Voting Rights Act, and then more
19:31
Speaker 1: remaps that go against him. Now like the fight for
19:34
Speaker 1: the House is now more of a knife fight than
19:38
Speaker 1: the polling indicates that it should be. But there just
19:41
Speaker 1: are just not enough competitive House seats for them to
19:44
Speaker 1: take a wave and win that twenty five thirty seat
19:47
Speaker 1: you know majority that a wave election normally would create.
19:51
Speaker 1: You know, now he has this disaster is showing for
19:55
Speaker 1: the establishment in New York City, which means he's going
19:58
Speaker 1: to be you know, yes, Democrats are still favored to
20:03
Speaker 1: win the House, but now his speaker's vote becomes a
20:06
Speaker 1: pain in the ass. And now the the you know,
20:10
Speaker 1: the the back door politicking he's going to have to
20:13
Speaker 1: do both to protect his left flank and a New
20:16
Speaker 1: York City and a rising uh Mamdani controlled New York City,
20:22
Speaker 1: so he can't alienate mam Donni.
20:25
Speaker 2: So it's this is.
20:29
Speaker 1: This is really this has really changed. I think what
20:36
Speaker 1: the Democratic how the Democratic Party is going to govern?
20:40
Speaker 1: Uh if the if the majorities are narrow and right
20:44
Speaker 1: now you're I think the majorities are more likely to
20:46
Speaker 1: be narrow than bake Uh in the House. And so
20:50
Speaker 1: these developments, Look, this is a that we've We've been
20:54
Speaker 1: saying it for a long time, that there are these
20:57
Speaker 1: two factions of both parties that have outsized influence. It
21:02
Speaker 1: did seem as if the establishment Democrats had done a
21:05
Speaker 1: better job of co opting their left wing than the
21:08
Speaker 1: establishment Republicans did of co opting their right wing. I
21:12
Speaker 1: think it's fair to say that the days of Democrats
21:16
Speaker 1: co opting their left wing, at least in New York City,
21:18
Speaker 1: are gone. And the questions does this go outside of
21:21
Speaker 1: New York City. We'll have the big test. We have
21:24
Speaker 1: a test in Colorado next week. There are some interesting
21:27
Speaker 1: establishment Democrats that are going up against. Some are progressive,
21:33
Speaker 1: some are outsiders. Depends on what you want to you
21:35
Speaker 1: know have and you know Michael Bennett, you know, I
21:38
Speaker 1: think I think he thought it would be a glide
21:41
Speaker 1: path that the governor's mansion. He might not make it
21:43
Speaker 1: out of the primary. Now he's facing the city attorney general,
21:46
Speaker 1: who's really running a campaign of who's going to go,
21:48
Speaker 1: who's confronting Trump? And why are you leaving Washington and
21:52
Speaker 1: not confronting Trump. I'm doing it out here. Why did
21:55
Speaker 1: you leave Washington to do it? Diana de Gett sitting
22:00
Speaker 1: member of Congress who's getting challenged from the left, very
22:03
Speaker 1: serious challenge, and John Hickenlooper is getting a challenge from
22:05
Speaker 1: the left. I suspect all of those challenges, you know,
22:12
Speaker 1: all of I don't think anybody is going to win
22:13
Speaker 1: with sixty percent of the voter more in to get
22:16
Speaker 1: Hickenlooper or Bennett. And it's very possible Bennett could lose
22:20
Speaker 1: to get could lose, and Hickelooper could get under fifty five.
22:24
Speaker 1: So I so that's going to be a test of
22:28
Speaker 1: this of this left ward movement. And I think that's
22:31
Speaker 1: another question. This has done really well on the coasts. Right,
22:34
Speaker 1: there's going to be a socialist mayor of NewYork, of Washington,
22:37
Speaker 1: d C. Socialist mayor of New York City. The one
22:40
Speaker 1: of the two candidates in LA mayor right, one comes
22:43
Speaker 1: from the DFA side of the isle. So this is
22:46
Speaker 1: going to be so we know that this plays in
22:49
Speaker 1: the coast. The question is can you have success in
22:55
Speaker 1: a Midwestern state to Michigan will be an interesting test.
22:59
Speaker 1: The Democratic Senate pro trimory is one thing. A general
23:01
Speaker 1: election would be a whole other story there. And then
23:06
Speaker 1: after this, look, I think it means, you know, this
23:10
Speaker 1: is obviously going to reshape the Democratic primary in twenty
23:13
Speaker 1: twenty eight, right, there is no doubt that the progressive
23:17
Speaker 1: left is going to feel emboldened. And you know, I
23:20
Speaker 1: don't think you will have an actual socialist Democratic nominee.
23:24
Speaker 1: I don't think the DSA is going to be able
23:25
Speaker 1: to be that powerful, that impactful that quickly. But if
23:30
Speaker 1: you're if you look at sort of is a democratic
23:34
Speaker 1: party now in three buckets of voters or two buckets
23:37
Speaker 1: of voters? Right, if you thought about it as sort
23:39
Speaker 1: of the progressive left versus sort of the establishment the
23:44
Speaker 1: pro business center, those are two buckets. Are we now
23:51
Speaker 1: seeing this? Is there a socialist progressive movement, a capitalist
23:56
Speaker 1: progressive movement and then a more pro business democratic movement.
24:00
Speaker 1: Are those your three buckets? And if those are your
24:02
Speaker 1: three buckets, well, two thirds of those, you know, two
24:06
Speaker 1: thirds of those factions lean to the progressives right, and
24:09
Speaker 1: so the likelihood that you're going to get somebody.
24:12
Speaker 2: That you know.
24:14
Speaker 1: It used to be the rule of Democratic presidential primaries
24:18
Speaker 1: were whoever could win the most electable period. The rule
24:22
Speaker 1: in Republican primaries was the most electable conservative. Right now
24:27
Speaker 1: they skew even further to the right. I wonder now
24:30
Speaker 1: if the rule of if the rule for the Democratic
24:33
Speaker 1: presidential primary is going to be who's the most electable
24:37
Speaker 1: progressive right, it is going it is not going to
24:41
Speaker 1: necessarily be who can who can do best with the
24:45
Speaker 1: center and with with actual swing voters. It's who can
24:51
Speaker 1: fire up the progressive base. I'm not sure whether that
24:56
Speaker 1: math is correct. I'm a tad skeptical of the math myself.
25:02
Speaker 1: I think the S word doesn't travel very in every
25:05
Speaker 1: state very well, and I certainly don't believe it travels
25:08
Speaker 1: in the Sunbelt, and I think it's very dangerous game
25:12
Speaker 1: Democrats are playing with the S word in Sun Belt
25:15
Speaker 1: states in general. Whether it's Arizona Georgia being the two
25:20
Speaker 1: most important of the sun Belt swing states, but even
25:23
Speaker 1: even further even than other states. But just because I
25:28
Speaker 1: might think there's a math problem doesn't mean that isn't
25:31
Speaker 1: where the energy is. And you know, mom down, he's
25:35
Speaker 1: had a pretty good six months. You know, he hasn't
25:39
Speaker 1: run into any huge obstacles yet, and they will, like,
25:43
Speaker 1: you know, look, some of this has been out of
25:45
Speaker 1: his control. Right. He can't enact some of his biggest
25:48
Speaker 1: ideas because a lot of that stuff comes from the
25:50
Speaker 1: state level. But man, he does the little things really well, right,
25:56
Speaker 1: and he is I think he has proven he's no flute. Yeah,
26:01
Speaker 1: he's pretty deft. His you know, the next speech, you
26:07
Speaker 1: know it that stuff matters. It's an intangible but it matters.
26:18
Speaker 2: You know.
26:19
Speaker 1: I've I I think I think he missed an opportunity
26:23
Speaker 1: to two inoculate himself a bit by not coming down
26:31
Speaker 1: stronger on on what happened in Congressman Goldman at that
26:38
Speaker 1: coffee shop. You know, Brad Lander condemned all this terrible
26:45
Speaker 1: rhetoric that was coming out against him on Tuesday afternoon.
26:52
Speaker 1: Perhaps doing it sooner might have helped, But that is
26:56
Speaker 1: that is the uncomfortable truth that has risen up. This
26:59
Speaker 1: rise of democratic socialism on the left has come almost
27:06
Speaker 1: intertwined with this rise of anti semitism in the last
27:10
Speaker 1: and look, I think you should be allowed to criticize
27:13
Speaker 1: Israel's politics without being called an anti Semiti. But I
27:21
Speaker 1: also think if you're pro Israel, you shouldn't be seen
27:27
Speaker 1: as somebody who's you know, basically, I've always thought of
27:32
Speaker 1: being pro Israel as do you believe in the right
27:35
Speaker 1: of Israel's existence. And let's not forget there's plenty of
27:39
Speaker 1: people in that region that do not want to see
27:41
Speaker 1: Israel exist. And it's when the rhetoric slips there that
27:49
Speaker 1: it puts a lot of people in uncomfortable places, uncomfortable positions,
27:54
Speaker 1: not feeling politically homeless. And that's you know, So the
28:00
Speaker 1: rise of one power in New York City is leaving
28:06
Speaker 1: another group of New York City Democrats that may feel
28:09
Speaker 1: politically homeless. Now there some of you on the left
28:12
Speaker 1: may say good, but guess what they vote to and
28:19
Speaker 1: where are they going to go? Wherever they go, it
28:23
Speaker 1: could become a force. Now this may and I think
28:27
Speaker 1: the open question in all of this, in the mom Dannie.
28:30
Speaker 1: Moment that we're having here is does this leave New
28:36
Speaker 1: York City? And the thing that I and I guess
28:39
Speaker 1: I will leave you with this, I'm I do believe
28:42
Speaker 1: that this will This guarantees that you will have a
28:46
Speaker 1: more leftward trajectory in the Democratic primary debate in the
28:50
Speaker 1: presidential New York City culturally has an outsized influence on
28:56
Speaker 1: things like that, and this is going to have an
28:58
Speaker 1: outside indist The question of whether how much the Democratic
29:05
Speaker 1: Party nationally starts to embrace this shift to the left,
29:08
Speaker 1: I think depends on outcomes in some statewide races this fall.
29:12
Speaker 1: You know, Canaday and Osborne win running as a progress
29:16
Speaker 1: essentially as a progressive independent Nebraska? Can Abdul say ed
29:20
Speaker 1: l s i ed win in a statewide in the
29:24
Speaker 1: Swinging Estate, one of the swing of states in the
29:26
Speaker 1: Union in Michigan. Does a progressive end up the governor
29:30
Speaker 1: of Wisconsin. There's a big Democratic primary to decide that.
29:35
Speaker 1: So we'll see what happens. I certainly, I certainly now,
29:38
Speaker 1: given what the energy we're seeing on the left, more
29:40
Speaker 1: likely we'll have a progressive nominee for governor, not not
29:43
Speaker 1: somebody that that the Chamber of Commerce of Milwaukee will
29:48
Speaker 1: be happy with. So, you know, that's the that's the
29:54
Speaker 1: open question in cities, This this rise in socialist isn't
30:00
Speaker 1: going to go away anytime soon. In previous iterations, when
30:05
Speaker 1: you've had these sort of liberal moments in the cities,
30:09
Speaker 1: they've usually died in the suburbs. And socialism, you know,
30:14
Speaker 1: democratic socialism, a big government idea, liberalism like that doesn't
30:19
Speaker 1: always travel make it much further than the than the suburbs,
30:24
Speaker 1: outside the suburbs. So but the fact is we're in
30:31
Speaker 1: the it's look the Democratic Party, this realignment that has
30:35
Speaker 1: been roiling our politics. Democrats, for the most part, have
30:41
Speaker 1: kept that realignment from totally reshaping their electorate and reshaping
30:46
Speaker 1: their politics until now right, and I think it's clear
30:53
Speaker 1: that the contours are changing. The buckets of factions here
31:00
Speaker 1: are changing, the leadership is changing, and the next two
31:05
Speaker 1: years are going to be an interesting transition in where
31:09
Speaker 1: this party heads next. But there's a real fight for
31:13
Speaker 1: the heart and soul of the Democratic Party, and Mom,
31:16
Speaker 1: Donnie has staked his claim and we're going to find out.
31:20
Speaker 1: You know, the adage is if you can make it there,
31:23
Speaker 1: you could make it anywhere. Well, Mom, Donnie and socialism
31:28
Speaker 1: so far making it in New York City? Can it
31:32
Speaker 1: travel outside of New York City successfully? That's going to
31:36
Speaker 1: be the test. I'll have more to say in a
31:43
Speaker 1: few of the other primaries, and we'll do some more
31:45
Speaker 1: cleanup on this for the Thursday podcast. But I also
31:51
Speaker 1: should make by the way we were doing our election
31:54
Speaker 1: live stream, Washington Wizards. You know, it's every day they
32:00
Speaker 1: get the first overall pick. The last time the Wizards
32:05
Speaker 1: were at all relevant in the NBA was the seventies,
32:10
Speaker 1: which is arguably the last time that the liberal wing
32:13
Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party was having its moments. So maybe
32:16
Speaker 1: the two things are going are going hand in hand.
32:20
Speaker 1: But in all seriousness, I do want to before I
32:23
Speaker 1: get to the interview with meyr Hole, I just want
32:25
Speaker 1: to take a few minutes to talk about my friend
32:27
Speaker 1: Alan Greenspan, and I just want to tell you the
32:30
Speaker 1: person I know. There's plenty of obituaries to read about him.
32:35
Speaker 1: You should read his books. Obviously, I worked with Andrew
32:41
Speaker 1: Mitchell for nearly twenty years at NBC. I consider Andrea
32:45
Speaker 1: one of my closest friends, and it's been an incredible
32:49
Speaker 1: privilege to get to know Alan. Now I only Alan
32:53
Speaker 1: and I only got to be buddies in the last
32:54
Speaker 1: fifteen years of his life, and what a joy it was.
33:01
Speaker 1: We would meet for lunch almost monthly for a period
33:04
Speaker 1: of time there. Pre COVID, we did it quite a bit.
33:08
Speaker 1: It got harder after COVID and all that stuff, and look,
33:11
Speaker 1: that got harder with a lot of people. But before COVID,
33:15
Speaker 1: and it really was a we were trading. I was
33:20
Speaker 1: getting I was getting a essentially a private lesson on
33:30
Speaker 1: economics from the great Alan Greenspan, and he was picking
33:35
Speaker 1: my brain about politics. He was fascinated by what was
33:38
Speaker 1: happening with the political realignment. And here's the thing about
33:40
Speaker 1: Alan is he was, at the end of the day,
33:42
Speaker 1: he was just another data nerd like the rest of us.
33:46
Speaker 2: And I think.
33:47
Speaker 1: The the shift of election analysis from vibes to data
33:54
Speaker 1: was I wish it had happened about twenty years sooner,
33:57
Speaker 1: and I think Alan would have left the FED and
33:59
Speaker 1: and become Kornacky he loved. But the man always grounded
34:06
Speaker 1: his points of view in data. Period. He certainly had
34:10
Speaker 1: his own political views. He certainly had his own you know.
34:13
Speaker 1: I think I think he's one of the few actual
34:17
Speaker 1: libertarians that served that high up and in any sort
34:20
Speaker 1: of office that we've had in this country. But he
34:23
Speaker 1: was data driven. He was always just obsessed with what
34:27
Speaker 1: is the data saying. He wasn't wish casting the data.
34:31
Speaker 1: He was just absorbing. And you know, we'd have these
34:37
Speaker 1: we'd have these monthly get togethers. He'd have these new
34:40
Speaker 1: charts out that he'd just put together, analysis that he'd done,
34:44
Speaker 1: sort of letting me know what was coming around the
34:46
Speaker 1: corner here. And you know, it's sort of frankly, just
34:50
Speaker 1: showing me how he forecast it. You know, how is
34:54
Speaker 1: it that you knew well in six months given what
34:57
Speaker 1: I'm seeing here now we think six months will probably
35:01
Speaker 1: have to do this with interest rates. And here's why,
35:04
Speaker 1: because in this sector we're seeing this slow down or
35:07
Speaker 1: we're seeing not enough seeing inputs over here. It was,
35:11
Speaker 1: it was. It gave me an entirely new appreciation for
35:17
Speaker 1: economic data in general, and certainly a lot more. I
35:20
Speaker 1: already had a lot of respect of what the Fed's
35:26
Speaker 1: job was and is, but it was it was. Look,
35:32
Speaker 1: the other part is, you know, Allen's been a part
35:34
Speaker 1: of some credible political history. You know, he was you know,
35:39
Speaker 1: there was a brief period where Ronald Reagan was going
35:42
Speaker 1: to have Gerald Ford as his running mate nineteen eighty. Basically,
35:46
Speaker 1: you were the idea was two presidents for the price
35:48
Speaker 1: of whate and green Span was one of the intermediaries there.
35:54
Speaker 1: He's pretty close with Ford. He worked in the Ford administration.
35:57
Speaker 1: He was pretty close with Dick Cheney and and it
36:02
Speaker 1: was just fun to get his side of the stories
36:04
Speaker 1: and all of these pieces of history. And look, I'm
36:07
Speaker 1: not going to share all of all of his thoughts there.
36:09
Speaker 1: Those are his thoughts. Whatever he chose to share in
36:11
Speaker 1: a book is one thing. You know, what he told me,
36:15
Speaker 1: our friendship was our friendship. But I just you know,
36:23
Speaker 1: for a lot of you, he was a two dimensional
36:25
Speaker 1: figure and I get it, and you know, and many
36:28
Speaker 1: of you may lionize and respect him, and you know,
36:31
Speaker 1: and others may say, oh, you know, he should have
36:33
Speaker 1: done this. You know, hindsight on FED decisions is always,
36:38
Speaker 1: you know, the easiest place to easiest place to come
36:41
Speaker 1: from and criticize. But it was a treat to know
36:46
Speaker 1: the three dimensional human being that was Alan Greensman. And
36:51
Speaker 1: he was a gentleman's gentleman. He adored his wife, the
36:59
Speaker 1: way he looked up the way. I'd watch him look
37:04
Speaker 1: at Andrea when we'd be at dinners. He looked up
37:10
Speaker 1: to her, he admired her, and she looked up to him,
37:14
Speaker 1: and she admired him, and it was It's a great
37:17
Speaker 1: love story. I'm I'm glad to have known them together.
37:27
Speaker 1: And you know, I just I cherish those few years
37:33
Speaker 1: I got to have where we were just lunch buddies,
37:36
Speaker 1: trading intel, him tutoring me on economics, and me, I'm
37:42
Speaker 1: not tutoring Alan Greenspan on anything, but you know, me
37:46
Speaker 1: letting him know whatever new cool item I think I'm
37:49
Speaker 1: seeing that I think he should be aware of. But
37:55
Speaker 1: you know, he was a gentle soul and he was
37:58
Speaker 1: a gentleman in every sense of the word, and he
38:02
Speaker 1: lived a remarkable life. Alan, I'm gonna miss it, and Andrea,
38:07
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about you, all right. With that, I'm gonna
38:10
Speaker 1: sneak at a break and when we come back, my conversation
38:13
Speaker 1: with your hood. This episode of The Check Time tast
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40:43
Speaker 1: join me again for a return to my friend, the
40:45
Speaker 1: mayor of Oklahoma City, David Holt. David and I are
40:49
Speaker 1: both GW guys. We're both kind of basketball junkies, and
40:55
Speaker 1: I know he's not busy here in the month of June,
40:58
Speaker 1: so we have something to talk about, right, mister mayor.
41:00
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. It's it's still a little bit
41:04
Speaker 2: of a morning period in Oklahoma City after our defeat
41:06
Speaker 2: in the Western Conference Finals. But I am, I am.
41:09
Speaker 2: The pain is assuaged a bit by our championship last year.
41:12
Speaker 2: I'll certainly be milking those memories for a long.
41:15
Speaker 1: Time, you know. I am curious, you know, going, you know,
41:21
Speaker 1: for a second championship and sort of like you know,
41:24
Speaker 1: you guys are all geared up, and then and then
41:25
Speaker 1: it just doesn't happen like that Game seven happens. I mean,
41:29
Speaker 1: was the city and like morning for a couple of days?
41:32
Speaker 1: How did it was? It was it that bad? I
41:34
Speaker 1: know the way I would feel when one of my teams,
41:36
Speaker 1: like you get it hurts more when you get close, sure,
41:40
Speaker 1: and when you hurt.
41:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, And as you know, when you win game five
41:44
Speaker 2: in a two two series, like it's like eighties enough
41:47
Speaker 2: teams win the series. So you did get a sense
41:50
Speaker 2: of like after game five, like okay, we took care
41:52
Speaker 2: of business, like we are on track, you know, So
41:56
Speaker 2: it's a roller custer and so yeah, losing Game seven
41:58
Speaker 2: was sad. I would say, you know, the actual circumstances
42:03
Speaker 2: of the game for those who watched, the Spurs really
42:05
Speaker 2: took it. I mean, they had so many insane made
42:09
Speaker 2: shots in that fourth quarter. You know, it's it kind
42:13
Speaker 2: of minimized the what it coulda should as you know,
42:15
Speaker 2: like I can tell you, like there was a part
42:16
Speaker 2: where we missed for free throws in a row and
42:18
Speaker 2: I wish I'd had those back. That kind of stuff,
42:20
Speaker 2: you know, that kind of haunts you. But man, when
42:22
Speaker 2: they hit and they did some of that as we talk,
42:25
Speaker 2: this is after gag three of the knicks, and you know,
42:27
Speaker 2: they had some of those same some of that same
42:29
Speaker 2: fourth quarter shot making. When they do that kind of thing,
42:31
Speaker 2: it does make you feel like, man, they earned it
42:33
Speaker 2: at least, you know, But no, it was. It was
42:35
Speaker 2: definitely sad around here. Still kind of is. But again
42:38
Speaker 2: we're still basking in the glow of last year, so
42:40
Speaker 2: that's that helps.
42:42
Speaker 1: Look, it does feel like we're about to be like
42:44
Speaker 1: the Western Conferences is going to be dominated by Oklahoma
42:47
Speaker 1: City and San Antonio. I mean, are you ready for
42:50
Speaker 1: this city rivalry?
42:51
Speaker 2: Right?
42:52
Speaker 1: I Mean, I sort of I love both cities. They're
42:54
Speaker 1: kind of you guys are both sort of on the
42:55
Speaker 1: rise cities, right, not cities that are sort of trying
42:58
Speaker 1: to remake them or reor you know, these are just
43:02
Speaker 1: cities that continue to sort of grow and get bigger
43:05
Speaker 1: and still get treated like small markets. And you're like,
43:07
Speaker 1: wait a minute, they're not very small markets.
43:09
Speaker 2: Somewhere, right, I mean all true. You know, First of all,
43:14
Speaker 2: we've had, especially last year when we were playing the Pace,
43:17
Speaker 2: there's all this small market conversation and I sort of
43:19
Speaker 2: had to remind people. I actually created a talking point
43:21
Speaker 2: that Commissioner Silver started using and citing me, and he
43:24
Speaker 2: would because I said, like, we're only a small market
43:27
Speaker 2: in the context of the NBA, and the NBA is
43:30
Speaker 2: only the thirty largest or you know, twenty eight largest
43:33
Speaker 2: markets in the United States, But like ninety percent of
43:36
Speaker 2: people don't live in any of those cities that have
43:40
Speaker 2: an NBA team, you know, And so just remember that
43:44
Speaker 2: when you talk about large and small markets, you have
43:46
Speaker 2: sort of artificially shrunk the universe of consideration. So yes, absolutely,
43:50
Speaker 2: San Antonio and Oklahoma City two big cities. A lot
43:54
Speaker 2: going on in both of course, by the way, both
43:56
Speaker 2: of us are in the process we've already broke ground
43:58
Speaker 2: on our new arena. We have a billion in the
44:00
Speaker 2: arena that's coming, so that's going to be another step
44:02
Speaker 2: forward for us. Yeah, and Antonio is I think putting
44:05
Speaker 2: the finishing touches on their whole arena deal. But they're
44:08
Speaker 2: going to be making grounds soon. So yeah, it's it's
44:11
Speaker 2: it's gonna be fun. And like you said, because of
44:13
Speaker 2: the youth, because of the youth of the teams, because
44:16
Speaker 2: of the contracts that have already been signed. I mean,
44:19
Speaker 2: both squads appear to be kind of set for the
44:21
Speaker 2: next five years.
44:23
Speaker 1: As the tops stay healthy the less right, it's that
44:26
Speaker 1: that hamstring of mister Williams, just stay healthy. Yes, look,
44:30
Speaker 1: you're you're you're on here. Though, for something a little
44:33
Speaker 1: bit different, you and I have this, you know, sort
44:35
Speaker 1: of on and off again text chain about just trying
44:38
Speaker 1: to we're both unhappy with our political system and what
44:43
Speaker 1: are different ways to come at it rather than coming
44:46
Speaker 1: at it from from from a hard partisan area. And
44:49
Speaker 1: you gave a you gave one of those speeches where
44:52
Speaker 1: you really worked on the speech. And I say, this
44:54
Speaker 1: is no resrespect to other speeches, but some speeches are boilerplate.
44:58
Speaker 1: You know, because you're opening something or you're dedicating something.
45:02
Speaker 1: But in this case, you're receiving a public policy award
45:05
Speaker 1: from the Howard Baker School at the University of Tennessee,
45:08
Speaker 1: and you decided to do you had something to say and
45:12
Speaker 1: used your speech to talk about a topic that we
45:15
Speaker 1: really don't teach, which is arguably at the core of
45:19
Speaker 1: the American idea, pluralism. Explain.
45:24
Speaker 2: So, yeah, it seems in this current political environment we
45:29
Speaker 2: have a lot of folks in the public dialogue who
45:33
Speaker 2: kind of act like you can exterminate different views like
45:36
Speaker 2: that somehow their view is eventually going to become the
45:41
Speaker 2: homogeneous view of the United States, And that was not. Actually.
45:46
Speaker 2: First of all, that's highly impractical and impossible absent for
45:50
Speaker 2: horrific political violence, which of course is something that we
45:54
Speaker 2: sometimes feel like we're on the edge of and certainly
45:57
Speaker 2: something that has happened in human history. But this whole
46:01
Speaker 2: American experiment was based on the idea of avoiding that
46:04
Speaker 2: by accepting pluralism. Pluralism is maybe too much of a
46:09
Speaker 2: political science word, but I kind of think we know.
46:11
Speaker 1: You and I would talk about we probably need to
46:13
Speaker 1: come up with a better term for the Marketers on
46:15
Speaker 1: this wa Pluralism is at the core of how Americans
46:21
Speaker 1: should view this country. But yeah, yeah, and.
46:23
Speaker 2: Pluralism is the idea that we are going to all agree,
46:27
Speaker 2: We're going to have a lot of different perspectives and
46:30
Speaker 2: that's okay, and we're going to move forward. We're going
46:32
Speaker 2: to basically use the democratic processes that were created two
46:36
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty years ago to take all of those
46:38
Speaker 2: different views and come up with a compromise. And it's
46:42
Speaker 2: not going to be perfect for any anyone. Really, I
46:46
Speaker 2: kind of think that the American experiment is designed to
46:48
Speaker 2: produce results that are good enough for everybody, just good enough.
46:52
Speaker 2: And maybe that's not inspiring to some people at the extremes,
46:56
Speaker 2: but like, that's what democracy produces, is good enough results
47:00
Speaker 2: if it's seventy percent of us in the middle can
47:02
Speaker 2: live with. And then we move forward with recognizing that
47:05
Speaker 2: a little bit of our viewpoint is reflected in the outcome,
47:08
Speaker 2: the outcome is indeed itself pluralistic, and then we move
47:13
Speaker 2: on to the next debate. But we also we just
47:15
Speaker 2: fundamentally accept that we're never going to exterminate differing views.
47:19
Speaker 2: We're never going to permanently defeat differing views. We're going
47:23
Speaker 2: to find a way to bring all of those views
47:26
Speaker 2: together in a compromise, a pragmatic solution, and then we
47:31
Speaker 2: move on.
47:32
Speaker 1: Look, you used to construction in your speech that I
47:34
Speaker 1: often use. I said, I like to remind people all
47:36
Speaker 1: the time why did humanity invent politics? Because we had
47:40
Speaker 1: to figure out a way to settle disputes without violence.
47:43
Speaker 1: We got tired of all disputes, whether it's about was
47:46
Speaker 1: about borders or resources, you name it, and sort of
47:50
Speaker 1: the beginning of humanity, everything ultimately was decided by who
47:53
Speaker 1: was bigger back, you know, and essentially a violent confrontation
47:58
Speaker 1: decided who got this piece of land, who got access
48:01
Speaker 1: to this natural resource. And then we got tired of
48:04
Speaker 1: that and we said, you know, maybe there's a way
48:05
Speaker 1: to do this without killing each other.
48:07
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean that was the great gift of two
48:09
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty years ago that the founders of this
48:11
Speaker 2: country gave us. Was a pretty good process, perhaps the
48:15
Speaker 2: best ever created to avoid violence. And even still we've
48:18
Speaker 2: had a civil war. I mean, I acknowledge that we've
48:22
Speaker 2: had other moments of violence. It's almost impossible to completely
48:25
Speaker 2: overcome it, but we have come pretty darn close relative
48:28
Speaker 2: to human history, and we are we are an outlier.
48:31
Speaker 2: It's very fragile, Like the default position for human civilization
48:35
Speaker 2: has been to live in a constant state of violence
48:39
Speaker 2: and chaos, right, and most people on this planet today
48:42
Speaker 2: live at least in some sort of authoritarian government. Like
48:45
Speaker 2: this choice that we have here to both individually and
48:50
Speaker 2: collectively make democratic decisions for our future is an outlier.
48:55
Speaker 2: And the relative peace that we enjoy within our country
48:58
Speaker 2: is an outlier, and we should be I protective of it,
49:01
Speaker 2: and we should be very proud of it, and we
49:02
Speaker 2: should be very intentional in cultivating it and not continually,
49:06
Speaker 2: as I feel like we currently are in our political discourse,
49:09
Speaker 2: sort of eroding it and drawing us closer to what
49:13
Speaker 2: the way that most humans have lived, which is not
49:15
Speaker 2: a good way to live. You know.
49:17
Speaker 1: One of the ways you like to promote mayors is
49:19
Speaker 1: you remind people that most mayors are elected and essentially
49:25
Speaker 1: nonpartisan elections, non partisan primaries. You don't identify your party,
49:29
Speaker 1: ID doesn't mean people don't know which way you lean.
49:32
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'm a little more conservative, a little more liberal,
49:35
Speaker 1: but that it's done that way because essentially it is
49:40
Speaker 1: and that that type that system produces more pragmatic mayors
49:47
Speaker 1: right when you because it's sort of it's self reinforcing
49:50
Speaker 1: on the pragmatism. Right, you're trying to find what is
49:53
Speaker 1: the consensus, say, sixty percent, sixty to seventy percent on
49:57
Speaker 1: an issue. Not necessarily you're trying to win. You'd love
49:59
Speaker 1: to win six per under the electorate, but that's unreasonable.
50:01
Speaker 1: But if you can get a sixty percent consensus on hey,
50:04
Speaker 1: maybe property taxes should be raised over here, that's a
50:07
Speaker 1: sixty percent Maybe it isn't you know that sort of thing?
50:11
Speaker 1: But is our So the question is are we polarized
50:15
Speaker 1: or is our system designed to polarize? And do we
50:19
Speaker 1: need to start repairing the structure of our democracy to
50:24
Speaker 1: it actually enhance pluralism's ability to thrive. I want, I'm
50:30
Speaker 1: starting to wonder if our system actually makes it harder.
50:33
Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely wonder No more, Chuck, It absolutely does. And
50:38
Speaker 2: it is the system that most elections operate under. Her
50:42
Speaker 2: but for whatever historic reasons. And I should probably research
50:45
Speaker 2: this some day to better understand kind of how this
50:47
Speaker 2: trend developed. But most mayors are not elected in the
50:51
Speaker 2: system that allecs governors and senators and presidents. So, and
50:56
Speaker 2: I'll submit to you that Oklahoma City is a really
50:58
Speaker 2: interesting case study this because our politics pretty much mirror
51:04
Speaker 2: the country. Trump won this county forty ninety eight and
51:08
Speaker 2: twenty twenty and twenty twenty four, so it's basically but.
51:10
Speaker 1: There is a weird let me, I want to there's
51:12
Speaker 1: always been this weird difference in Oklahoma that goes against
51:16
Speaker 1: the grain of almost every other state, which is the
51:18
Speaker 1: more urban areas. You know, for the longest time, back
51:21
Speaker 1: in the day, urban areas were republican and the rural
51:24
Speaker 1: areas were democratic. And that was true even as late
51:27
Speaker 1: as the nineties, right.
51:29
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yes, yeah, that was like the Civil War Coalition
51:32
Speaker 2: still in place, right, and.
51:34
Speaker 1: Oklahoma is one of the last places that it existed.
51:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, totally, and that was that. Yeah, you're absolutely right,
51:40
Speaker 2: Like we were more republican in the cities, more democratic
51:43
Speaker 2: in the rural areas, and they were kind of Dixie.
51:45
Speaker 1: Crafts, right, so very inverted in that sense. And I
51:49
Speaker 1: guess now you could say it's in some ways, right,
51:52
Speaker 1: it's more reverted to the mean of the rest of
51:55
Speaker 1: the country. Yeah, there's a bit more culturally conservative.
51:58
Speaker 2: Cable News has sort of nationalized everything. It's very difficult,
52:02
Speaker 2: if not impossible, to be an Oklahoma Democrat now like
52:05
Speaker 2: it was still twenty years ago.
52:07
Speaker 1: Right to be different I had Brad Carson on recently,
52:09
Speaker 1: and that's that variant. It's like, yeah, it is difficult.
52:12
Speaker 1: It is difficult to different differentiate these days.
52:15
Speaker 2: Perfect example. Yeah, so here in Oklahoma City, the county,
52:22
Speaker 2: the city is pretty purple, basically like the country as
52:25
Speaker 2: a whole. The ethnic demographics are almost perfectly mirror than
52:29
Speaker 2: the nation. And so you'd say, well, I guess your
52:32
Speaker 2: politics then would be just as divisive and polarized and
52:36
Speaker 2: split fifty to fifty as everything else. You said that
52:39
Speaker 2: it's hard for a candidate to get sixty percent. Well,
52:42
Speaker 2: I've been elected in three elections as mayor. I got
52:44
Speaker 2: seventy eight, sixty and eighty six percent. And it's because
52:49
Speaker 2: I face an electorate through a system you just described
52:53
Speaker 2: when I go to the ballot as mayor, and it's
52:56
Speaker 2: true it's non partisan. I actually think that's the least
52:59
Speaker 2: consequential factor because people know I was a Republican state senator.
53:03
Speaker 2: I served in the George W. Bush White House, Like
53:06
Speaker 2: people know I'm a Republican. It's not a secret just
53:09
Speaker 2: because it's not on the ballot. It's still really well known.
53:11
Speaker 2: But what matters to me, I think, is that everybody
53:15
Speaker 2: gets the same ballot. Every eligible voter in Oklahoma City
53:19
Speaker 2: gets the same ballot. They have the same pool of candidates,
53:22
Speaker 2: which means that you know, all the candidates have to
53:24
Speaker 2: face all of the voters, and all of the voters
53:26
Speaker 2: get to see all of the candidates. And so it's
53:28
Speaker 2: a completely different incentive structure than the closed part is
53:32
Speaker 2: in primary process that elects most everybody else. And so
53:35
Speaker 2: I'm doing politics the way I feel like it was
53:37
Speaker 2: done for a couple hundred years. I'm looking at the
53:39
Speaker 2: entire electorate and I'm saying, where's like, where's the sweet spot, right,
53:44
Speaker 2: Where's that seventy percent of people in the middle that
53:46
Speaker 2: I can build a coalition from. They might be registered Republicans, Democrats,
53:50
Speaker 2: and independents, and I might be easier to sell to
53:54
Speaker 2: some other than others, but like, it's all part of
53:57
Speaker 2: my pool. I can work with this. I can build
53:59
Speaker 2: a co from there. And that's what mayors generally do,
54:03
Speaker 2: and it's it's why I think we get things done.
54:06
Speaker 2: I mean we kind of have to get things done,
54:08
Speaker 2: you know, like the services we provide are necessary for
54:10
Speaker 2: human survival, so like we better be able to work
54:13
Speaker 2: get everybody in the community to work together for outcomes.
54:16
Speaker 2: But really, the electoral system, it simply lends itself to
54:20
Speaker 2: that last thirty years is that we've passed a whole
54:23
Speaker 2: bunch of major tax initiatives investing in our city, whether
54:26
Speaker 2: it's quality life infrastructure or core infrastructure. My initiative has
54:29
Speaker 2: gotten seventy two percent, seventy one percent, and eighty five percent,
54:35
Speaker 2: you know, and I look at that and I think
54:37
Speaker 2: that's what you can do. You know, there's this view that, like,
54:39
Speaker 2: there's no way you could ever get seventy percent of
54:41
Speaker 2: Americans to agree on something. Actually you can if you
54:44
Speaker 2: just have an electoral system. It sort of incentivizes candidates
54:47
Speaker 2: and leaders like me to do that.
54:49
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, let's be honest, if you had to
54:51
Speaker 1: just start the process of becoming mayor of Oklahoma City
54:54
Speaker 1: by first winning a faction, yeah, first winning of the
55:00
Speaker 1: orseman of just a core group of of of your voters,
55:03
Speaker 1: and maybe it would have been Republicans in this case,
55:06
Speaker 1: but any any sort of faction you're you're already not
55:10
Speaker 1: starting in your seventy percent. Maybe some of those people
55:13
Speaker 1: will be in your seventy, but not all of them.
55:17
Speaker 1: And there's gonna be somebody in that thirty that is,
55:20
Speaker 1: you know, that just wants they want their point of
55:23
Speaker 1: view represented. And if they don't get it representedive, they're
55:25
Speaker 1: going to veto you, right.
55:27
Speaker 2: And as you know, like I mean, we've had close
55:29
Speaker 2: partisan primaries for a long time in this country. It's
55:32
Speaker 2: just that in the last twenty years, it seems that
55:35
Speaker 2: that first gatekeeping function has gotten so much more extreme.
55:40
Speaker 2: You know, there used to be, of course in politics,
55:42
Speaker 2: this pivot, the pivot to the general you know, hey, yeah,
55:45
Speaker 2: you had to sort of go to the right or
55:46
Speaker 2: the left.
55:47
Speaker 1: You know, I believe micro targeting for that. You know,
55:49
Speaker 1: when we were when we were blissfully ignorant about undecided voters.
55:57
Speaker 1: And this goes back as right before four. I would
55:59
Speaker 1: say four was the election that changed. Before two thousand
56:05
Speaker 1: and four, we didn't assume. We assumed the undecided voter
56:09
Speaker 1: was somehow somewhere in the center, it was kind of
56:12
Speaker 1: a moderate and in order to appeal to them in
56:14
Speaker 1: October of your general election, you had to come across
56:17
Speaker 1: as somebody who would be willing to work across the ops,
56:20
Speaker 1: and literally everybody ended with the same theme in there.
56:23
Speaker 1: At I worked with if you're a Republican Ted Kennedy,
56:26
Speaker 1: if you were a Democrat Ronald Reagan, right like you would,
56:29
Speaker 1: you would name drop somebody prominent from the other side
56:32
Speaker 1: of the aisle because we all assumed. And then what
56:34
Speaker 1: happened We found out these people aren't moderates, these undecided
56:38
Speaker 1: are actually have all sorts of and then they became
56:42
Speaker 1: selectively targeted and there went consensus campaigning. I mean, it's
56:46
Speaker 1: one of those things where the more information we got,
56:49
Speaker 1: it actually it it hurt the larger cause of now
56:55
Speaker 1: used to work. Yeah, no, just a theory.
56:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, well whatever the causes. I mean, now people running
57:02
Speaker 2: and here's the case study. Right, So I just ran
57:04
Speaker 2: for reelection just a few months ago, and my TV
57:06
Speaker 2: ads were about the growth of the city and the
57:09
Speaker 2: growth of the economy and our delivery of course services
57:12
Speaker 2: like the things you would expect you historically would expect
57:15
Speaker 2: somebody to run on. Simultaneously, we have a governor's race
57:20
Speaker 2: in Oklahoma right now, and we've got you know, at
57:23
Speaker 2: least four funded candidates running TV commercials and all Republicans.
57:28
Speaker 2: I mean, so the makeup of the state a little
57:30
Speaker 2: different than the makeup of the city. So it's widely
57:33
Speaker 2: perceived with good cause, that the Republican primary is going
57:37
Speaker 2: to elect the next governor of Oklahoma. You know, if
57:40
Speaker 2: you were to ask all Oklahoma, it's like, what are
57:43
Speaker 2: the top issues. I am highly confident that the bread
57:47
Speaker 2: and butter issues that you and I would would hope
57:49
Speaker 2: they would answer would be at the top of the list.
57:51
Speaker 2: Education and healthcare, in the economy, and infrastructure and public
57:55
Speaker 2: safety and so on. That is not the messaging out
57:59
Speaker 2: of these four funded campaigns. It's trans kids, it's Muslims,
58:04
Speaker 2: it's China. It's these very strange things, right that.
58:10
Speaker 1: They're probably never going to show up on the to
58:12
Speaker 1: do list of the next government.
58:14
Speaker 2: Right, I mean, but they they are. I mean, I
58:16
Speaker 2: don't know that these candidates are acting irrationally because these
58:20
Speaker 2: are the things that their polling tells them.
58:23
Speaker 1: The market that they have to compete in is telling
58:26
Speaker 1: them these issues matter.
58:28
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, here's a classic anecdotal example. There was
58:32
Speaker 2: recently a debate hosted by the Oklahoma Republican Party for
58:36
Speaker 2: the Oklahoma governor's candidates, and the chairman started out and
58:40
Speaker 2: that the one thing she had to say about the chairwoman,
58:43
Speaker 2: the one thing she had to say about how great
58:45
Speaker 2: Oklahoma is is that she can carry a gun without
58:48
Speaker 2: a permit. And I thought, I mean, I couldn't even think,
58:51
Speaker 2: like how many things I'd have to get through bragging
58:53
Speaker 2: on my state before I would get to that item.
58:56
Speaker 2: For her, it was definitional, you know, and it just
58:58
Speaker 2: shows her. And listen, her vote count too, right, their
59:01
Speaker 2: voices should count too, but not disproportionately. So and that's
59:04
Speaker 2: the problem is, like fifteen percent of people in Oklahoma
59:07
Speaker 2: are about to choose our governor, and they'll deliver this
59:12
Speaker 2: candidate who has passed these kind of bizarre litmus tests,
59:15
Speaker 2: you know, for this gatekeeping group. Then they will deliver
59:19
Speaker 2: them to the general election, and the voters will just
59:22
Speaker 2: reflexively vote for the Republican, probably by a sixty to
59:26
Speaker 2: forty margin. And and of course we have a runoff,
59:30
Speaker 2: so like that happens in August. So the primary is
59:32
Speaker 2: coming up in June, the runoffs in August. So I
59:34
Speaker 2: mean we're talking about at that point, you were getting
59:37
Speaker 2: down to such a small group of people making this decision.
59:40
Speaker 2: They have they have unorthodox views, extreme views, they have
59:44
Speaker 2: you know, they believe in extreme tactics. Obviously, they're very
59:46
Speaker 2: loyal to President Trump, which you know, even though the
59:49
Speaker 2: president's still probably above water in Oklahoma, he certainly has
59:52
Speaker 2: more than his fair share of detractors here. But you
59:54
Speaker 2: would never know that watching these watching these campaign ads,
59:57
Speaker 2: because it is one hundred percent support among the group
1:00:00
Speaker 2: that will make this decision. This is not healthy for democracy.
1:00:04
Speaker 2: There cannot be this much disconnect between the large, the
1:00:08
Speaker 2: electorate at large, and the outcomes that are produced in
1:00:11
Speaker 2: the end. And right now, that's the problem because fifteen
1:00:14
Speaker 2: percent of people are making the decisions for all of us,
1:00:17
Speaker 2: and these in these statewide races.
1:00:28
Speaker 1: Look, you are as good of an advocate for open
1:00:31
Speaker 1: primaries as anybody I can find. And I've even you know,
1:00:34
Speaker 1: I often like to use an example of I watch
1:00:37
Speaker 1: I've seen former mayors serve in Congress who got there
1:00:44
Speaker 1: under this system of primaries, but when they were mayor,
1:00:46
Speaker 1: they got there and are all party primary and they
1:00:48
Speaker 1: literally have been two different political individuals. And it is
1:00:52
Speaker 1: it is because of the voters they have to serve
1:00:54
Speaker 1: that they believe they have to serve in order to
1:00:57
Speaker 1: satisfy the contract that they sought, you know that you
1:01:01
Speaker 1: unofficially signed. And by the way, in defense of the
1:01:04
Speaker 1: person I'm thinking of here is as you just said,
1:01:08
Speaker 1: it's a very rational way to behave right. The system is.
1:01:11
Speaker 1: So it goes back to this, do you teach can
1:01:15
Speaker 1: you teach pluralism or do you have to experience living
1:01:19
Speaker 1: in a diverse place for you to truly understand why
1:01:26
Speaker 1: it's necessary? And I asked this because increasingly we are
1:01:31
Speaker 1: self sorting, so we all live you know, I know,
1:01:36
Speaker 1: I grew up on a street that had that was
1:01:40
Speaker 1: very bipartisan. That does not exist anymore. That just people
1:01:44
Speaker 1: live in the neighborhoods that they're culturally comfortable with, and
1:01:47
Speaker 1: their cultural comforts now align with your political parties.
1:01:52
Speaker 2: This is true to a degree, but it's like I think,
1:01:56
Speaker 2: sometimes this sort of winner take all mentality, this idea
1:02:00
Speaker 2: that I'm going to exterminate the other side, causes us
1:02:03
Speaker 2: to have blinders to the reality that people with different
1:02:06
Speaker 2: views live amongst us, even in places that seem overwhelmingly
1:02:10
Speaker 2: one way or the other.
1:02:11
Speaker 1: I mean, right, well, Lost Age is a good example.
1:02:14
Speaker 1: I love this. So look, you know, Donald Trump, I think,
1:02:18
Speaker 1: only got about twenty five thirty percent of the vote
1:02:21
Speaker 1: right in LA County, But he's still got more raw
1:02:23
Speaker 1: vote in LA County than like eight states combined. Right,
1:02:27
Speaker 1: that's a lot of people that support Donald Trump that
1:02:30
Speaker 1: live in LA County. And yes, they're in the thirty percent,
1:02:33
Speaker 1: not the seventy percent.
1:02:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean and still, I mean a group
1:02:38
Speaker 3: of four people, a group of four friends, a group
1:02:40
Speaker 3: of four family members, right, is statistically likely in LA
1:02:44
Speaker 3: County to have at least one person who voted for
1:02:46
Speaker 3: Donald Trump.
1:02:47
Speaker 2: And so you're you walk forward because of majority rule
1:02:51
Speaker 2: with this mentality of nobody likes Donald Trump in LA County,
1:02:55
Speaker 2: Well one out of every four people does. I mean,
1:02:57
Speaker 2: I know that that's not enough to win an election,
1:02:59
Speaker 2: but it's it's something that should be respected in the
1:03:01
Speaker 2: democratic process. It's it's a viewpoint that has some weight
1:03:05
Speaker 2: to it. And even here in Oklahoma, it's like, yeah,
1:03:07
Speaker 2: we always talk about Donald Trump got sixty five percent. Well,
1:03:10
Speaker 2: that means that a third of the people voted for
1:03:13
Speaker 2: Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, like.
1:03:16
Speaker 1: Like maybe may thousands and thousands of people in Oklahoma right,
1:03:19
Speaker 1: this is it like sub like arcane two percent minority course, right.
1:03:25
Speaker 2: So it's like it's it's if it's one out of
1:03:27
Speaker 2: three or one out of four, it's probably somebody in
1:03:29
Speaker 2: your workplace, is somebody in your family? Right, And that's
1:03:32
Speaker 2: why I think, like to your point, I think you've
1:03:35
Speaker 2: got to reck for it. Maybe the first SIP is
1:03:36
Speaker 2: to recognize that pluralism is in your house. Purism is
1:03:42
Speaker 2: in your house.
1:03:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, be careful, and we need to like and we need.
1:03:47
Speaker 2: To embrace that again and stop you know, yeah, stop
1:03:49
Speaker 2: trying to make it worse, you know, and stop trying
1:03:52
Speaker 2: to divide. Let's let's face the reality that we all
1:03:56
Speaker 2: have different views and let's talk about them responsibly.
1:03:59
Speaker 1: One of the ways that I try to make myself
1:04:01
Speaker 1: feel better about the current era we're in is I'm like, look,
1:04:03
Speaker 1: whatever you think of Donald Trump, his election and behavior
1:04:07
Speaker 1: has provided our institutions an MRI. We've had an MRI
1:04:14
Speaker 1: for democracy, an MRI for our infrastructure of the democracy,
1:04:19
Speaker 1: an MRI. And what norms ought to be codified?
1:04:23
Speaker 2: You know?
1:04:23
Speaker 1: Right, where should we erect a guard? Right? It's like
1:04:25
Speaker 1: finding out you build this great new road, we might
1:04:28
Speaker 1: need a guardrail over here. We might need this traffic
1:04:31
Speaker 1: light over here. We didn't know that when we built it,
1:04:33
Speaker 1: because you didn't know where were the congestions going to be,
1:04:37
Speaker 1: where was the development going to come from. So I
1:04:40
Speaker 1: choose to look at the Trump era as this incredible
1:04:42
Speaker 1: MRI that is providing us all an opportunity to see
1:04:45
Speaker 1: what works and what doesn't. So in that's spirits, what
1:04:51
Speaker 1: do you see this era that's going to that You think, Okay,
1:04:55
Speaker 1: let's take this chicken ass and turn it into chicken salad.
1:05:00
Speaker 2: Well, okay, great. By the way, I love your road analogy,
1:05:02
Speaker 2: especially as the mayor, but it also yeah, I could
1:05:04
Speaker 2: worked that for a while. I mean, we don't build
1:05:06
Speaker 2: roges for the perfect drivers. We build them for bad
1:05:10
Speaker 2: drivers and drug drivers. And you know that's why we
1:05:12
Speaker 2: have guardrails literally, right, like a great driver, you wouldn't
1:05:15
Speaker 2: need a guardrail. So, you know, I think that you
1:05:21
Speaker 2: raise a good point. It's this era has been one
1:05:25
Speaker 2: where people like me and people like you are spending
1:05:27
Speaker 2: a great deal of time talking about the democratic experiment
1:05:31
Speaker 2: and you know what it means, and just having the
1:05:34
Speaker 2: kind of talk that we just had for the last
1:05:35
Speaker 2: thirty minutes in a different era, we would have spent
1:05:37
Speaker 2: this thirty minutes talking about been policy issues, you know,
1:05:40
Speaker 2: But instead we're talking.
1:05:41
Speaker 1: About that and as we should, and I mean in
1:05:43
Speaker 1: development and dealing with AI, which I'm sure in some
1:05:46
Speaker 1: ways we're glad not to have a conversation about AI
1:05:48
Speaker 1: data centers, but anyway, go ahead.
1:05:49
Speaker 2: But we're we're instead we're talking about foundational principles. But
1:05:53
Speaker 2: if out of this we as a society, we as
1:05:56
Speaker 2: a country, more intentionally choose to reinvigorate and recommit to
1:06:01
Speaker 2: the American experiment, then it will have been ultimately kind
1:06:04
Speaker 2: of a successful time in our country's history, because certainly
1:06:07
Speaker 2: we've spent a lot of time in our country's history
1:06:10
Speaker 2: taking this American experiment for granted. It just like worked,
1:06:13
Speaker 2: and we just felt like that's this and this the
1:06:15
Speaker 2: way all humans organize themselves, and of course, as we've discussed, no,
1:06:19
Speaker 2: they definitely don't. We're very unique and lucky. So you know,
1:06:23
Speaker 2: if we're forced to make an intentional choice out of this,
1:06:26
Speaker 2: and then we choose the right path, that's great. Obviously,
1:06:29
Speaker 2: we many of us fear that things could go a
1:06:31
Speaker 2: different direction, but I think to stop to avoid that
1:06:35
Speaker 2: I'd say that the assessment that I have that you
1:06:38
Speaker 2: asked for, you know, what is the action we can
1:06:40
Speaker 2: take out of all this? I mean not to beliebor
1:06:43
Speaker 2: the point, but we have got to get away from
1:06:45
Speaker 2: closed parties and primaries. We've got to get away from
1:06:48
Speaker 2: a small subset of the elector and I mean a
1:06:50
Speaker 2: very small I really think I use this number a lot.
1:06:53
Speaker 2: I still believe in it. I say it's fifteen percent
1:06:54
Speaker 2: at the right, fifteen percent at the left, seventy percent
1:06:58
Speaker 2: of people to the middle who aren't definitely don't agree
1:07:00
Speaker 2: on everything, but like can compromise, like learn how to
1:07:03
Speaker 2: do that in kindergarten, like are willing to work together.
1:07:06
Speaker 2: And again I feel like in Oklahoma City we've proven.
1:07:08
Speaker 1: That except the premise that we're not all going to
1:07:11
Speaker 1: ever agree, and like, right, that's all, Like that's like
1:07:14
Speaker 1: and if you can get seventy percent to accept the premise,
1:07:17
Speaker 1: then you can at least move on.
1:07:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so so we've got to change. We've got
1:07:21
Speaker 2: to actually make reforms in our processes. And it's a
1:07:25
Speaker 2: state by state thing. That's why it's so hard, you know,
1:07:27
Speaker 2: but that's federalism. Like we got to make process changes
1:07:30
Speaker 2: in fifty states, not all fifty, but like a lot
1:07:33
Speaker 2: of these states to get us back to where more
1:07:36
Speaker 2: people are a part of all of the decisions in
1:07:39
Speaker 2: an election process. And I'm and you know that will
1:07:42
Speaker 2: get us back to where people like me are able
1:07:47
Speaker 2: to get elected. And that's what the country needs. It
1:07:50
Speaker 2: doesn't have to be me, but the country needs people
1:07:53
Speaker 2: like me who are actually trying to bring people together
1:07:56
Speaker 2: and they're trying to find that pragmatic compromise.
1:08:00
Speaker 1: The biggest challenge in opening up primaries are the two
1:08:03
Speaker 1: political parties themselves. Right in every state, one is more
1:08:07
Speaker 1: against the idea than the other, and it's usually the
1:08:09
Speaker 1: party that has got the most political power in said state.
1:08:14
Speaker 1: We see this with the efforts that United America has
1:08:18
Speaker 1: done with trying to put an instant runoff voting or
1:08:20
Speaker 1: ranked choice voting. I say insidant runoff. Jared Golden, who's
1:08:25
Speaker 1: read the retiring member of Congress from Maine. He loves
1:08:28
Speaker 1: the concept of rank choice voting, He goes, but the
1:08:31
Speaker 1: name sucks because we've got to call it instant runoff
1:08:35
Speaker 1: the rank choice. It just doesn't you know, And that
1:08:38
Speaker 1: I think there is some argument that it is hard
1:08:41
Speaker 1: to visualize how the ranked choice system works. But the
1:08:45
Speaker 1: larger concept of instant runoff or a runoff I think
1:08:47
Speaker 1: is something people agree on. But how do you talk
1:08:52
Speaker 1: part because the parties can stop this, and the parties
1:08:56
Speaker 1: don't want more voters in their pool. And it seems
1:09:03
Speaker 1: that that if you're going to get this, if you
1:09:06
Speaker 1: don't have a referendum process, in states that you do,
1:09:09
Speaker 1: you have a reasonable shot at making this work. But
1:09:12
Speaker 1: in states without it, you're still going to It's really
1:09:15
Speaker 1: hard to get people to buck their party leadership because
1:09:19
Speaker 1: the party leadership fears essentially losing their own standing if
1:09:23
Speaker 1: they open up primaries totally.
1:09:26
Speaker 2: And I don't really have a viable path forward if
1:09:29
Speaker 2: you don't have a referendum process. In Oklahoma, we.
1:09:32
Speaker 1: Do, we have it direct or do you have to
1:09:36
Speaker 1: go through the legislature like you know, I.
1:09:39
Speaker 2: Mean, you need no involvement from the legislature. The governor
1:09:42
Speaker 2: calls the election date, but he's compelled to if you
1:09:45
Speaker 2: get the signatures. And so there was a group, it
1:09:47
Speaker 2: was funded, It worked for weeks and weeks to get
1:09:51
Speaker 2: the signatures. Earlier this year it fell short. There's a
1:09:54
Speaker 2: pending lawsuit. I mean it's going to be one of
1:09:56
Speaker 2: these kind of multi year efforts if it's successful at all.
1:09:59
Speaker 2: So it has to have I have a lot of
1:10:00
Speaker 2: passion and some resources behind it. But it's possible. It's
1:10:04
Speaker 2: legally doable in Oklahoma. I recognize not every state even
1:10:08
Speaker 2: has that opportunity, and you know, they'll be the last ones,
1:10:12
Speaker 2: you know, but maybe it'll be a different era and
1:10:14
Speaker 2: by that point forty states have adopted it and last
1:10:16
Speaker 2: ten will recognize that the ground has shifted. I don't know,
1:10:20
Speaker 2: but yeah, it's to me an argument.
1:10:23
Speaker 1: You know, take the state of Oklahoma, what do you guys,
1:10:26
Speaker 1: arguably fifty percent Republican, thirty thirty percent D twenty percent
1:10:31
Speaker 1: Indy probably in these days something like that, right. I
1:10:35
Speaker 1: think in Massachusetts, if you went on voting, it would
1:10:37
Speaker 1: be about the other way with fifty percent D. Yes.
1:10:40
Speaker 1: Technically they're more Independence registered in Massachusetts than either two parties.
1:10:44
Speaker 1: But I bring that up because in Massachusetts they do
1:10:46
Speaker 1: have a ballot measure that they're about going to a
1:10:50
Speaker 1: top two because in this very blue state they have
1:10:55
Speaker 1: all these members of the state legislature go on a
1:10:57
Speaker 1: post in the general election, and wouldn't it be better
1:11:01
Speaker 1: to see two flavors of Republicans in Oklahoma, for instance,
1:11:05
Speaker 1: for governor, or two flavors of Democrats in Massachusetts on
1:11:09
Speaker 1: the November ballot and let the minority, you know, let
1:11:13
Speaker 1: the one third of Democrats in Oklahoma or the one
1:11:17
Speaker 1: third of Republicans in Massachusetts. Yeah, they're the swing boat. Okay,
1:11:22
Speaker 1: they should be the swing boat. Yeah, that's that makes sense.
1:11:26
Speaker 2: That's how it plays out. It's this would your process
1:11:29
Speaker 2: should not flip seats or flip states like that. That's
1:11:33
Speaker 2: a bad process.
1:11:33
Speaker 1: And that's what that's what the party leaders think is
1:11:36
Speaker 1: going to happen with rank choice voting. And it's just like, look,
1:11:39
Speaker 1: you didn't like that Alaska turned out not to be
1:11:41
Speaker 1: as red of a state as you thought it was,
1:11:43
Speaker 1: Like that's really what right?
1:11:44
Speaker 2: You know?
1:11:45
Speaker 1: It turned out like the Alaska is a more purple
1:11:48
Speaker 1: than it is red. And with a way, if you've
1:11:50
Speaker 1: ever spent time up there, you'd get.
1:11:52
Speaker 2: It, you know, because as we just discussed, every state,
1:11:56
Speaker 2: even California, one in four people are Republicans. Even in
1:11:59
Speaker 2: Oklahoma wanted to people are Democrats. So nothing is actually
1:12:02
Speaker 2: as red or blue as its reputation. It's everything's got
1:12:05
Speaker 2: a purple influence if you let everybody vote, which is
1:12:09
Speaker 2: good ultimately for pragmatic outcomes. And so yeah, in these
1:12:13
Speaker 2: blue states are probably gonna end up with in most cases,
1:12:15
Speaker 2: in most top two results with two Democrats, but may
1:12:18
Speaker 2: probably one farther to the left, one more in the middle,
1:12:21
Speaker 2: and then the Republicans will actually in many ways decide
1:12:25
Speaker 2: who the who the winner is. They will and they
1:12:27
Speaker 2: all align with the person more in the middle, and
1:12:29
Speaker 2: you'll get a more pragmatic governance out of that. I
1:12:32
Speaker 2: mean La Mayor right, Like Okay, Now, now that the
1:12:35
Speaker 2: only Republican Canada has fallen the third the Republican voters
1:12:39
Speaker 2: in La County are probably gonna if they they may
1:12:42
Speaker 2: they may sit it out completely frustration.
1:12:45
Speaker 1: Look the experience in California when when there's been two
1:12:49
Speaker 1: people of the same party meeting in November, you do
1:12:52
Speaker 1: have a significant drop off that there's a significant undervote.
1:12:55
Speaker 1: But whether it's congressional race or cery wide, but those.
1:12:59
Speaker 2: Who want to have the influence can have it. And
1:13:01
Speaker 2: you know, Republicans probably going to begrudgingly vote for mayor
1:13:05
Speaker 2: Bass over somebody who's more as aligned with the DSA right,
1:13:08
Speaker 2: so and like so they have influence. And no, I mean,
1:13:11
Speaker 2: you're not gonna there's no process that should elect a
1:13:14
Speaker 2: Republican mayor in a city that's seventy five percent democratic, right, Like,
1:13:18
Speaker 2: that shouldn't be what the process does. That should be
1:13:20
Speaker 2: what the voters do. But this actually gives the process
1:13:24
Speaker 2: that California has because they have a top two now,
1:13:27
Speaker 2: it gives Republicans way more influence than they would otherwise have,
1:13:31
Speaker 2: you know, in these questions, in these major questions.
1:13:42
Speaker 1: You know, when we were having this discussion about your
1:13:44
Speaker 1: speech and you came at it straight about politics, and
1:13:47
Speaker 1: you pointed me out to something the Bush Center had
1:13:50
Speaker 1: put out about pluralism and what was interesting about their report,
1:13:53
Speaker 1: And frankly, everything the Bush Center's been doing, they really
1:13:57
Speaker 1: stay away from politics. I know people might think presidential
1:14:00
Speaker 1: library steers away from politics, Yes, particularly this one. I
1:14:04
Speaker 1: mean I think they totally know they don't. They're not.
1:14:07
Speaker 1: They don't want anybody to think there's subtexting, you know,
1:14:10
Speaker 1: the current administration, even though maybe they are, but they're
1:14:15
Speaker 1: not going to do it. They're not going to stick
1:14:16
Speaker 1: a finger in the eye of the administration, right, They're not.
1:14:19
Speaker 1: They're not trying to have that, and it struck me
1:14:23
Speaker 1: reading that report that this gets back to this discussion
1:14:27
Speaker 1: of do we know how to teach civics and let
1:14:29
Speaker 1: me get let me, let me throw this make may
1:14:32
Speaker 1: You may think this comes from an odd way of
1:14:34
Speaker 1: getting at this conversation, but I'm very concerned about the
1:14:38
Speaker 1: voucherizing of our of our school system in this respect.
1:14:43
Speaker 1: Is that our public education system, because of its mere
1:14:49
Speaker 1: existence and it's in there's a lot of imperfections about it.
1:14:52
Speaker 1: I'm well aware of some of all of the challenges,
1:14:56
Speaker 1: but it's a remarkable system in that it was about
1:15:00
Speaker 1: as egalitarian of a thing the government did is and
1:15:03
Speaker 1: you know, outside the military, right, the military might be
1:15:06
Speaker 1: the most egalitarian institution that the government's in charge of,
1:15:09
Speaker 1: But the public school system was because hey, you still
1:15:12
Speaker 1: educated people, whether they were poor or rich. They might
1:15:16
Speaker 1: and these people might be in the same class. They're
1:15:19
Speaker 1: not going to be in the same class, right, nobody's
1:15:22
Speaker 1: in the same classes anymore. And my concern is that
1:15:25
Speaker 1: in the in the I'm all for parents should have choice.
1:15:28
Speaker 1: I made a choice on my kids. We all I'm
1:15:31
Speaker 1: not going to sit here now, but I am concerned
1:15:34
Speaker 1: that that is the unintended consequence of that is that
1:15:39
Speaker 1: you don't get taught pluralism if you end up getting
1:15:43
Speaker 1: educated in a monoculture.
1:15:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now, I mean that is I and I've been
1:15:48
Speaker 2: a supporter of school choice through the year, so I certainly.
1:15:51
Speaker 1: Still practice it. So I'm not going to sit here
1:15:53
Speaker 1: and criticize it. I worry, but I'm not going to
1:15:57
Speaker 1: tell you that I don't worry about the larger unintentional people.
1:16:00
Speaker 2: Absolutely, it's a it's a major unintended consequence. I went
1:16:04
Speaker 2: to a public high school and you had a broad
1:16:07
Speaker 2: spectrum of socioeconomics.
1:16:09
Speaker 1: And how good was that for you? Because I did
1:16:10
Speaker 1: the same thing. I went to a All I have
1:16:12
Speaker 1: to say to you about growing up in Miami is
1:16:14
Speaker 1: I went to high school that was a third or
1:16:15
Speaker 1: third of third And by me just saying that, if
1:16:18
Speaker 1: you know, you know, I don't have to say anything else.
1:16:20
Speaker 1: And in different communities it might be the same thing,
1:16:23
Speaker 1: but the makeup of your third or third or third
1:16:25
Speaker 1: was slightly different, you know. But either way, Look, I'm
1:16:29
Speaker 1: not saying we all didn't self segregate at times like
1:16:32
Speaker 1: many a high school cafeteria does. Yeah, but there were
1:16:37
Speaker 1: many opportunities where we didn't.
1:16:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it look at and you and I went
1:16:41
Speaker 2: to a top sixty school, you know in DC.
1:16:44
Speaker 1: Out of our public revolutionaries.
1:16:47
Speaker 2: Go reds and Yeah, and it set us up for
1:16:51
Speaker 2: life to have that diversity in our in our life,
1:16:54
Speaker 2: diversity of thought, diversity of ethnicity, diversity of you know,
1:16:58
Speaker 2: socioeconomic status. Yeah. I mean if it may not be
1:17:02
Speaker 2: salvageable to have that happening in public schools, you know,
1:17:07
Speaker 2: with the with the current trend lines of school choice
1:17:10
Speaker 2: and really just the explosion of private education. I mean
1:17:13
Speaker 2: that would have been private education in Oklahoma City when
1:17:15
Speaker 2: I grew up. That was a very very small subset
1:17:18
Speaker 2: of the city.
1:17:19
Speaker 1: How big is it now? I mean, you know, I
1:17:21
Speaker 1: mean it.
1:17:21
Speaker 2: Just feels like there's just an explosion of all these
1:17:23
Speaker 2: different kinds of private schools, you know, like like and
1:17:26
Speaker 2: not like for people that are rich like it used
1:17:28
Speaker 2: to be. Right.
1:17:29
Speaker 1: No, it's all sorts of right, and they're like various
1:17:31
Speaker 1: identity groups. And it's not always the identity groups you think.
1:17:34
Speaker 1: I'm thinking. There's different philosophies that how to teach right,
1:17:38
Speaker 1: you know, those things.
1:17:40
Speaker 2: So maybe it's that we have to be creative and
1:17:42
Speaker 2: trying to figure out, well, what are the other ways
1:17:44
Speaker 2: we can have some kind of diverse exposure to each
1:17:48
Speaker 2: other and force those experiences. I don't know, I do think.
1:17:52
Speaker 2: I mean, what you're describing is a societal ill that
1:17:56
Speaker 2: we need to talk about. And it certainly isn't It's
1:17:59
Speaker 2: only compounded the electoral system, which further segregates us. Yet again,
1:18:03
Speaker 2: it's just another example of it. But yeah, I mean
1:18:06
Speaker 2: we know it.
1:18:07
Speaker 1: And I don't know. I mean, like, do you do
1:18:09
Speaker 1: you build institutions for this? I mean, you know. I
1:18:12
Speaker 1: I'm in the middle of putting together a potential introductory
1:18:17
Speaker 1: class for incoming freshmen for USC for a DC program,
1:18:22
Speaker 1: and I said, well, why don't we teach the Constitution?
1:18:25
Speaker 1: Because I don't think they're taught the Constitution in high school.
1:18:28
Speaker 1: Trust me, I've noticed.
1:18:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, well absolutely. I mean the problem is, for whatever
1:18:34
Speaker 2: reason Civics was people always say Civics isn't taught in
1:18:38
Speaker 2: this country, and I'm like, well they're I mean I
1:18:40
Speaker 2: think every high school.
1:18:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, but we we it's somebody actually, let me throw
1:18:44
Speaker 1: a theory at you that somebody wrote me, wrote into me,
1:18:47
Speaker 1: and I thought, of course, this is the problem. You
1:18:50
Speaker 1: want to talk about you know, the pile of stuff
1:18:54
Speaker 1: in the pile of law, of unintended consequences, right always
1:18:57
Speaker 1: is like through the to the moon. It's so big.
1:19:00
Speaker 1: But No Child Left Behind emphasized testing and testing. You know, Look,
1:19:09
Speaker 1: testing is one of those things that well, if you
1:19:11
Speaker 1: don't have testing, how how else are you going to
1:19:13
Speaker 1: find out whether people have learned stuff? But I understand
1:19:16
Speaker 1: that you don't want to be teaching to the test,
1:19:18
Speaker 1: But what did what did we care about in that
1:19:21
Speaker 1: fifteen year period where No Child Left Behind was kind
1:19:23
Speaker 1: of sort of dictating how we how we manage the
1:19:27
Speaker 1: education system. We were really just worried about math and English.
1:19:32
Speaker 1: You know what, there aren't a lot of tests for
1:19:33
Speaker 1: social studies, so there wasn't you couldn't be There is
1:19:40
Speaker 1: not a if you didn't hit a certain reading score,
1:19:43
Speaker 1: or you weren't going to be passed. If you didn't
1:19:45
Speaker 1: hit a certain math score, you weren't going to be passed.
1:19:48
Speaker 1: We didn't create that social studies score, right that it didn't,
1:19:53
Speaker 1: And so I thought, boy, you're right that before when
1:19:58
Speaker 1: we started teaching to the test, to the assessment tests,
1:20:02
Speaker 1: and because we didn't make Civics and Social studies and
1:20:05
Speaker 1: history part of the core assessment that essentially this was
1:20:11
Speaker 1: one of those it's benign neglect, right. It wasn't intentional,
1:20:16
Speaker 1: It's just that everybody had to prioritize succeeding with the tests.
1:20:20
Speaker 1: So guess what the best teachers stopped teaching social studies
1:20:24
Speaker 1: and went back to teaching English and math. Yea, what
1:20:26
Speaker 1: do you think of that thesis? No?
1:20:28
Speaker 2: I mean, of course you get you you will do
1:20:30
Speaker 2: better at whatever you measure and whatever you test. And
1:20:33
Speaker 2: we weren't testing that because it was viewed as it's
1:20:36
Speaker 2: not necessary for a career.
1:20:38
Speaker 1: I guess, right, unless you're going to We sort of
1:20:39
Speaker 1: thought that and was like, actually, it turns out it is.
1:20:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's necessary for the survival of the ecosystem that
1:20:48
Speaker 2: is going to allow for all these careers. I mean,
1:20:50
Speaker 2: you know, I always say that every human, every you know,
1:20:54
Speaker 2: country to date had same act, same human bodies, same
1:20:58
Speaker 2: access to the same reason sources. Why is it that
1:21:01
Speaker 2: America unleashed you know, uh, innovation like no country or
1:21:05
Speaker 2: society before us. Why did we put people on the moon?
1:21:09
Speaker 2: It's the it's this system we created that allowed for
1:21:12
Speaker 2: peace and safety and predictability and the rule of law
1:21:17
Speaker 2: and democratic choice, all of the things that make up
1:21:20
Speaker 2: the American experiment is necessary for us to be able
1:21:23
Speaker 2: to use those mass skills and those science skills and
1:21:26
Speaker 2: all those other things. So yeah, we got to get
1:21:27
Speaker 2: that down first.
1:21:29
Speaker 1: No, I mean, look, I just don't think a free
1:21:30
Speaker 1: market works without a democracy, and a democracy doesn't really
1:21:35
Speaker 1: work without a free market. I mean, I think that's
1:21:37
Speaker 1: what we discovered.
1:21:38
Speaker 2: Right, M absolutely.
1:21:40
Speaker 1: No, yeah, in that sense. Let me get you out
1:21:44
Speaker 1: of here on on on this because I actually sort
1:21:47
Speaker 1: of made a passing reference that I wasn't going to ask,
1:21:50
Speaker 1: but were I wanted to bring up some I had
1:21:52
Speaker 1: an interview with John Tester earlier this week is going
1:21:55
Speaker 1: to be on part of new Sphere, and he issued
1:21:58
Speaker 1: an interesting warning to his fellow Democrats. He said, just
1:22:03
Speaker 1: because these data centers are unpopular and it's good politics
1:22:06
Speaker 1: to beat them up, doesn't mean you don't want to
1:22:10
Speaker 1: be supportive of figuring out the future here, Like you know,
1:22:14
Speaker 1: there was he had this fear and that this is
1:22:17
Speaker 1: the real to me, the real art of being an
1:22:21
Speaker 1: elected official. It is being responsive to concerns of your constituents,
1:22:28
Speaker 1: but being able to have the temperament to understand, I
1:22:32
Speaker 1: understand what you don't like. At the moment. We can't
1:22:35
Speaker 1: just say no. What we can do is put these
1:22:39
Speaker 1: guardrails or do this. You think you have an electorate
1:22:44
Speaker 1: that's ready for a nuanced conversation about these AI data
1:22:48
Speaker 1: centers and what. Yes, it takes up water, Yes it
1:22:50
Speaker 1: takes up these things. But hey, this is what progress.
1:22:55
Speaker 1: There is always going to be some sacrifice with progress,
1:22:57
Speaker 1: and we can't just shut the door on it.
1:23:00
Speaker 2: Well, okay, so you're I mean, you're making is the
1:23:03
Speaker 2: classic tension. You're you're articulating the classic tension between the
1:23:06
Speaker 2: greater good and nimbiism essentially. And let me take a
1:23:11
Speaker 2: different type of land use as an example of where
1:23:14
Speaker 2: where a person in my position has to think about
1:23:17
Speaker 2: the greater good and has to explain that to my residence.
1:23:21
Speaker 2: If we needed to place a landfill or a trash
1:23:25
Speaker 2: transfer facility or something like that that's relatively undesirable, or
1:23:30
Speaker 2: a jail whatever, something that's pretty pretty necessary for the
1:23:33
Speaker 2: operations of a city, but it's nevertheless not something you
1:23:36
Speaker 2: like to live nearby. You know that certainly puts an
1:23:39
Speaker 2: obligation on me because this is clearly directly related to
1:23:44
Speaker 2: the function I'm trying to serve for you. I've got
1:23:47
Speaker 2: to figure out how to place that thing, and I
1:23:49
Speaker 2: may have to vote over the objections of a room
1:23:52
Speaker 2: full of really angry people. I think what you're asking
1:23:55
Speaker 2: on AI is a little more challenging because it's like,
1:23:57
Speaker 2: that's not actually a function of city at government to
1:24:00
Speaker 2: make sure that the world has advancements in artificial intelligence technology,
1:24:05
Speaker 2: right Like, so so I've got to really look, I
1:24:08
Speaker 2: got to think I've got to you know, that's almost
1:24:10
Speaker 2: conceptualizing it like the placing of a military base or something,
1:24:13
Speaker 2: although we don't we don't actually get to say no
1:24:16
Speaker 2: to military base is because of the supremacy clause. Right,
1:24:18
Speaker 2: So it may be that what you're what you're saying
1:24:21
Speaker 2: there is going to have to require federal intervention because
1:24:24
Speaker 2: I don't know that local officials are really going to
1:24:28
Speaker 2: be able to center that type of societal need over nimbiaism, because.
1:24:34
Speaker 1: Because you're just going to get voted out if you
1:24:36
Speaker 1: if you go again to the Nimbi craft and the
1:24:38
Speaker 1: next people are going to be even more anti Nimby
1:24:40
Speaker 1: than the first people, or or or.
1:24:42
Speaker 2: It demands that the builders really do something for the community.
1:24:46
Speaker 2: I mean just basically pay off the community, like like
1:24:49
Speaker 2: here is you know, here's all the fields we're going
1:24:52
Speaker 2: to build, or here's the you know, the library we're
1:24:54
Speaker 2: going to build. Or here's just some straight cash to
1:24:56
Speaker 2: hire some firefighters. I mean whatever. I mean, it just
1:24:59
Speaker 2: it's going to but you know, they're going to have
1:25:01
Speaker 2: to like buy their way I think into success and
1:25:04
Speaker 2: some of these land used decisions, or they'll just end
1:25:06
Speaker 2: up putting them, you know, they'll they'll get more skilled
1:25:09
Speaker 2: and understanding jurisdictions and maybe they'll put them out in
1:25:11
Speaker 2: rural areas where they don't have to sit in front
1:25:13
Speaker 2: of the mare and council, you know. I mean, like
1:25:15
Speaker 2: who knows where this will develop, but it's very organic
1:25:17
Speaker 2: right now. And just so you know, in our city,
1:25:19
Speaker 2: we actually just issued a moratorium till the end of
1:25:21
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six so we can try to figure it out.
1:25:24
Speaker 2: You know.
1:25:24
Speaker 1: It's it's you know, it's funny here we were just
1:25:26
Speaker 1: talking about our lack of consensus and we're not very
1:25:28
Speaker 1: good at pluralism. Well, hey, there is one issue that
1:25:31
Speaker 1: does seem to unite everybody right now that has been
1:25:34
Speaker 1: skepticism about AI. I thought you're going to say nimbism,
1:25:37
Speaker 1: but yeah, ye, membism too. I mean, it's all part
1:25:40
Speaker 1: of it, and it's all wrapped up in together. But boy,
1:25:42
Speaker 1: this data center thing has taken on a life of
1:25:45
Speaker 1: its own and there is no there is there is
1:25:50
Speaker 1: it is put It is normally the type of thing
1:25:53
Speaker 1: where if you want to be hey, we want to
1:25:55
Speaker 1: we want to bring these new technology companies into our
1:25:59
Speaker 1: into our re and this is good for us. In
1:26:01
Speaker 1: like ninety percent of the time that would have been
1:26:03
Speaker 1: good politics, not right now, you know.
1:26:07
Speaker 2: Now, I think we'll figure it out. It's a class,
1:26:09
Speaker 2: it's just a new issue. It's ultimately these things settle out,
1:26:13
Speaker 2: you know. But it is. It has definitely come fast,
1:26:16
Speaker 2: and it's come with a lot of significance and a
1:26:19
Speaker 2: lot of national debate. We'll figure it out. They'll become
1:26:22
Speaker 2: norms soon enough, I think. But yeah, we're definitely right
1:26:25
Speaker 2: in the middle of it right now.
1:26:27
Speaker 1: Before I let you go, is there an issue we're
1:26:29
Speaker 1: missing right now in Washington that you think is a
1:26:31
Speaker 1: bit more on fire in the in your neck of
1:26:34
Speaker 1: the woods, that you ought to get a little more attention,
1:26:37
Speaker 1: you know.
1:26:37
Speaker 2: I I Well, it's happening in Washington and it's happening
1:26:41
Speaker 2: in my neck of the woods. I don't think there's
1:26:43
Speaker 2: enough national media attention on housing and the legislation that
1:26:48
Speaker 2: has moved, you know, in the House and the Senate.
1:26:51
Speaker 2: In Congress.
1:26:52
Speaker 1: I mean it's bipartisan. It's got like bipartisan interest.
1:26:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's got you know, there's a really nice speech
1:26:59
Speaker 2: that cong Wisman Flood of Nebraska gave and he was
1:27:04
Speaker 2: presenting the House bill just a few weeks ago, and
1:27:06
Speaker 2: he talked about the I saw it because he talked
1:27:08
Speaker 2: about the Conference of Mayors. He talked about working with
1:27:11
Speaker 2: his Democratic colleague, Congressman Cleaver. It was like the throwback
1:27:16
Speaker 2: that I've been that I've been desperate for. It was
1:27:18
Speaker 2: really nice, and that this has been very bipartisan, you know,
1:27:22
Speaker 2: Tim Scott and Elizabeth Warrens in the Senate, Flood and Cleaver,
1:27:26
Speaker 2: Waters and Hill.
1:27:28
Speaker 1: What does it unlock for you? You know, forget this
1:27:31
Speaker 1: bill gets past, what does it do for you in
1:27:33
Speaker 1: Oklahoma City? Just so that people, I mean.
1:27:36
Speaker 2: It's it's it's one of those classic Washington bills. It's
1:27:38
Speaker 2: got like one thousand things in it, right, like a
1:27:40
Speaker 2: lot of different programs and and but it definitely gives
1:27:43
Speaker 2: us more tools we still have. I mean we, we
1:27:46
Speaker 2: and the developers of Oklahoma City still carry the greatest
1:27:49
Speaker 2: burden on this issue. But this, this is the first
1:27:52
Speaker 2: congressional action of this significance on housing in decades, and
1:27:56
Speaker 2: so we absolutely welcome it. But it is it's not
1:27:59
Speaker 2: a panacea. I mean, we still got to do our
1:28:01
Speaker 2: part here, but I think housing is the number one issue.
1:28:04
Speaker 2: And again, maybe to bring it full circle as we conclude,
1:28:08
Speaker 2: it's like, you know, like that's the kind of issue
1:28:10
Speaker 2: that should be leading the candidate commercials all across the
1:28:13
Speaker 2: country and instead we're talking about Muslims and trans kids.
1:28:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, which doesn't feel like a priority. David Holt, Mayor
1:28:22
Speaker 1: of Oklahoma City, it's appreciate you. I can't look, it's
1:28:29
Speaker 1: not every day that a mayor is going to give
1:28:30
Speaker 1: a speech about pluralism, you know, And that's what made
1:28:34
Speaker 1: it to me a tad more significant. So, I you know,
1:28:39
Speaker 1: this is the type of leading that you just don't see,
1:28:42
Speaker 1: and I understand why. Look, Spencer Cox is trying, right,
1:28:45
Speaker 1: you do have certain people that are trying to and
1:28:49
Speaker 1: there's another part of me that says, look, as soon
1:28:51
Speaker 1: as this administration is in the history books. Maybe the
1:28:55
Speaker 1: air will clear a little bit on this. I don't know,
1:28:57
Speaker 1: but we've been saying that for a while.
1:28:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, thank you for highlighting it, Shack. And by
1:29:01
Speaker 2: the way, for anybody who's interested, google David hole Tower
1:29:05
Speaker 2: Baker Award speech and you know you'll find the text.
1:29:08
Speaker 2: And I would love for people to read it and
1:29:09
Speaker 2: continue to think about these foundational issues that are really
1:29:13
Speaker 2: dictating all the other policy outcomes that were so frustrated.
1:29:16
Speaker 1: By distrust me. This wasn't a speech defending how Shay
1:29:19
Speaker 1: Gildris Alexander plays basketball and topping another podcast for another day, exactly,
1:29:27
Speaker 1: all right, David, good to see. But thanks Jeb. Well,
1:29:41
Speaker 1: I'm sorry that I had to use a political science
1:29:43
Speaker 1: term pluralism in that conversation with my friend David Holt there.
1:29:47
Speaker 1: But you can see why Mayor hold Night sort of
1:29:49
Speaker 1: seeied eye and that, I mean, I can't help that.
1:29:53
Speaker 1: Keep coming back to that question. I got a few
1:29:56
Speaker 1: now it's probably a month or so ago, about why
1:30:01
Speaker 1: there's a whole generation that's sort of not quite sure
1:30:03
Speaker 1: how the system works and maybe has incorrect expectations of
1:30:08
Speaker 1: what politics is supposed to be it's always supposed to
1:30:14
Speaker 1: be a compromise. Nobody gets one hundred percent of what
1:30:16
Speaker 1: they want at a single entity gets one hundred percent
1:30:19
Speaker 1: of what they want. But we've kind of forgotten pluralism,
1:30:22
Speaker 1: and it's clearly something we're not teaching. And I do
1:30:26
Speaker 1: think the unintended consequence of teaching teaching to the tests
1:30:29
Speaker 1: that colleges prioritize, which are English skills and math skills,
1:30:35
Speaker 1: we do not prove. We do not make civic skills
1:30:38
Speaker 1: or requirement to graduate high school to get into college.
1:30:41
Speaker 1: Perhaps if we did, we'd have a much better civically
1:30:46
Speaker 1: educated electorate, which perhaps wouldn't deliver us this sort of
1:30:55
Speaker 1: populism slop that we've been delivered. Whether it's got a
1:31:00
Speaker 1: shade of left wing or a shade of a right
1:31:02
Speaker 1: wing to it, this populist slop is just that, if
1:31:07
Speaker 1: we want to call ai slop to me political slop,
1:31:10
Speaker 1: as usually, you know, it's people that run against They
1:31:17
Speaker 1: don't run four right, you know, And when you're always
1:31:20
Speaker 1: running against and everything is against against, it against, but
1:31:23
Speaker 1: you don't really have a vision of four, your messaging
1:31:28
Speaker 1: turns into that slop pretty quickly. But anyways, you can
1:31:31
Speaker 1: see why I'm such a big admirer of David Hole.
1:31:34
Speaker 1: I think this is a public servant that actually sees
1:31:39
Speaker 1: his you know, doesn't see party or ideology as one
1:31:43
Speaker 1: of the top three things that should matter the most
1:31:45
Speaker 1: when it comes to public service. I think we need
1:31:48
Speaker 1: more people like him. It's top five times, top five,
1:31:54
Speaker 1: top as you know, my Top five every week is
1:32:00
Speaker 1: brought to you by Fan Duel. So with that, you know,
1:32:05
Speaker 1: the other day, my daughter told a friend of hers that, oh, yeah,
1:32:08
Speaker 1: my dad's a political influencer, and I cringed. I said,
1:32:10
Speaker 1: what the hell does that mean, right, influencer? I said,
1:32:15
Speaker 1: I guess you could say. You know, George Will was
1:32:17
Speaker 1: the important influencer of my father back in the seventies
1:32:20
Speaker 1: and eighties. He bought all his books and read all
1:32:22
Speaker 1: his columns. I just view George Will as a columnist
1:32:27
Speaker 1: and an analyst, and the platform of his of where
1:32:32
Speaker 1: he espoused his views was usually a newspaper, a magazine,
1:32:36
Speaker 1: or a Sunday show. These days, the venues change. But
1:32:41
Speaker 1: I don't think what people like George Will or myself
1:32:46
Speaker 1: for trying to do or anything any different. But anyway
1:32:49
Speaker 1: the point is is that I think what we used
1:32:52
Speaker 1: to call columnists we now call influencers. And as somebody
1:32:55
Speaker 1: who has written a column for thirty years, we're all
1:32:58
Speaker 1: aware of the occasional news crutch, meaning there's something happening
1:33:02
Speaker 1: in the news and go ahead and lean on it
1:33:05
Speaker 1: as a crutch, maybe because you don't have a unique
1:33:09
Speaker 1: topic this week to tackle. Now. I don't want to
1:33:12
Speaker 1: say I don't have unique topics. I think every week
1:33:14
Speaker 1: I have great top five lists. I think this I
1:33:17
Speaker 1: thought I wanted it to zag a little bit.
1:33:19
Speaker 2: It is.
1:33:20
Speaker 1: We're getting close to the fourth of July, and with
1:33:23
Speaker 1: the reflecting pool in the news, I thought, you know,
1:33:25
Speaker 1: it's a good time for me to roll out the
1:33:27
Speaker 1: following top five.
1:33:28
Speaker 2: You know.
1:33:28
Speaker 1: In fact, people ask me, if you've got somebody visiting
1:33:31
Speaker 1: Washington for the first time, where do you take them?
1:33:34
Speaker 1: And it's a great question for me because guess what
1:33:37
Speaker 1: I do have my own I call it the death Tour,
1:33:41
Speaker 1: and I mean this in the best sense of the word.
1:33:43
Speaker 1: I think, are the best memorials in Washington, the best
1:33:46
Speaker 1: tour stops in Washington. As great as some of the
1:33:49
Speaker 1: museums are, and as great as some of the big
1:33:51
Speaker 1: memorials are, it's this sort of death tour that I'm
1:33:55
Speaker 1: going to describe that I think is the most impactful
1:33:58
Speaker 1: and really does give you a sense of a sense
1:34:02
Speaker 1: of history more than just visiting a landmark. So that's
1:34:08
Speaker 1: my top five list, which does not include the Reflecting Pool,
1:34:11
Speaker 1: the Washington Monument, or the Lincoln Memorial, the Jeffson Memorial.
1:34:14
Speaker 1: And this is no knock on those, but I'll tell
1:34:16
Speaker 1: you the single greatest way to see those memorials is
1:34:21
Speaker 1: a way that I've seen it thousands of times and
1:34:23
Speaker 1: it never gets old to me. In an airplane as
1:34:26
Speaker 1: you're coming in getting ready to land at Nashville, that
1:34:30
Speaker 1: never gets old to me every time. I still can't
1:34:33
Speaker 1: believe there is no other, frankly landing like it. You know,
1:34:39
Speaker 1: New York City to me pales in comparison. Yes, when
1:34:42
Speaker 1: you land at LaGuardia, if you crane your neck on
1:34:44
Speaker 1: the left, you can see the Manhattan Skyline. And that's
1:34:47
Speaker 1: if you've never seen it, it can be impressive. Ones
1:34:50
Speaker 1: for some reason, it never gets old to me. The
1:34:54
Speaker 1: DC Skyline, if you will. Let's hope it doesn't get
1:34:57
Speaker 1: ruined with new ideas by the car administration, but that
1:35:01
Speaker 1: DC Skyline, the Capital Dome, the Washington Monument, and the
1:35:05
Speaker 1: Lincoln Memorial. That line there in some ways better to
1:35:09
Speaker 1: see from an airplane than actually see up close. It's
1:35:12
Speaker 1: more powerful from a little bit of distance like that
1:35:17
Speaker 1: than it is up close. So this is no knock
1:35:20
Speaker 1: on those But when you're visiting me, and I'm taking
1:35:23
Speaker 1: you on this tour for the first time, we're not
1:35:25
Speaker 1: going to those places. We may accidentally bump into those areas,
1:35:29
Speaker 1: but we don't. We don't go to those places as
1:35:35
Speaker 1: a destination. So before I get to the top life,
1:35:37
Speaker 1: one more thing I want to get out there. There
1:35:42
Speaker 1: is one honorable mention that didn't make my top five,
1:35:46
Speaker 1: and it simply didn't make my top five out of
1:35:48
Speaker 1: for geographical reasons, and it's Mount versus Mount Vernon. Look
1:35:52
Speaker 1: honestly an impact alone, it belongs in the top five.
1:35:56
Speaker 1: I love Mount Vernon. I love I mean, and it
1:35:58
Speaker 1: is extraordinary. They've been doing to it as what it is.
1:36:02
Speaker 1: But I'm leaving it off because it's really not a
1:36:05
Speaker 1: part of a typical day in what if you're touring Washington,
1:36:09
Speaker 1: you have to make a conscious decision go to Mount Vernon.
1:36:11
Speaker 1: It's a destination unto itself, it can be a thirty
1:36:13
Speaker 1: to forty five minute drive of traffic sucks, and once
1:36:17
Speaker 1: you're there, you want to stay there. You know, it's
1:36:19
Speaker 1: a day trip. And if you've never been, go just
1:36:22
Speaker 1: trust me, go go go. Whatever your politics, whatever your
1:36:25
Speaker 1: views on the founding Fathers, George Washington's life story is
1:36:28
Speaker 1: still one of the most remarkable stories in our history.
1:36:31
Speaker 1: Mount Vernon does a tremendous job telling it. They've now
1:36:34
Speaker 1: got a library that's connected with it, that's run by
1:36:39
Speaker 1: a terrific historian who I love, who's been on this
1:36:45
Speaker 1: podcast before, and all of that. And I'll tell you,
1:36:49
Speaker 1: if you go to Mount Vernon, take the boat across
1:36:52
Speaker 1: the Potomac and go that way. It's a little bit longer,
1:36:57
Speaker 1: but you know, you could see yourself how impossible it
1:37:02
Speaker 1: would be to throw a silver dollar from George Washington's
1:37:05
Speaker 1: house across the Potomac. So, for the purposes of this list, though,
1:37:09
Speaker 1: I'm keeping it to places you can experience as part
1:37:12
Speaker 1: of an actual Washington, DC visit one day. This is
1:37:17
Speaker 1: my tour, So here we go. Number five on my
1:37:20
Speaker 1: list is the only memorial to World War One. The
1:37:25
Speaker 1: District of Columbia's World War One memorial. Most people don't
1:37:28
Speaker 1: even know it exists. In fact, many people stumble across
1:37:31
Speaker 1: it accidentally. It's tucked away in the National Mall, and
1:37:34
Speaker 1: because it doesn't have the scale of the newer memorials,
1:37:37
Speaker 1: it's actually pretty easy to miss. You just sort of
1:37:39
Speaker 1: walk by it and go. It looks like somebody accidentally
1:37:42
Speaker 1: left a piece of a monument somewhere. It's like a
1:37:46
Speaker 1: miniature Jefferson or a miniature, you know, sort of. It's oval,
1:37:50
Speaker 1: so it's easy to miss. But it's kind of what
1:37:52
Speaker 1: I like about it, and it in some ways it
1:37:56
Speaker 1: sadly correctly frames how this country remembers World War WI
1:38:00
Speaker 1: not well. And it isn't even a national memorial. It's
1:38:04
Speaker 1: technically a city memorial. It's a local one. It's the
1:38:08
Speaker 1: city's memorial to the Washingtonians who served in World War One.
1:38:13
Speaker 1: And yeah, there's something refreshing about it. And I'm all
1:38:16
Speaker 1: filled with monuments to presidents, wars and national movements. This
1:38:21
Speaker 1: memorial reminds you that Washington is still a city. It's
1:38:24
Speaker 1: a community in and of itself and has been for decades.
1:38:28
Speaker 1: It's a place where ordinary people lived ordinary lives before
1:38:32
Speaker 1: history threw them into something to have to do something extraordinary,
1:38:36
Speaker 1: like fight in behalf of this country overseas in Europe.
1:38:39
Speaker 1: So it is the only memorial national memorial on the
1:38:43
Speaker 1: mall to World War One, and it happens to be
1:38:46
Speaker 1: a local memorial. So that's number five in my list,
1:38:48
Speaker 1: and one I always want to make sure people do
1:38:50
Speaker 1: not overlook number four. It's all part of my little
1:38:54
Speaker 1: walking tour here. It's on Constitutional Avenue. It's the Albert
1:38:56
Speaker 1: Einstein Memorial. Now, when I first moved to Washington, I
1:39:00
Speaker 1: found the Einstein Memorial to be one of the city's
1:39:02
Speaker 1: best kept secrets. It's this enormous bronze Einstein's statue of
1:39:08
Speaker 1: Einstein sitting outside the National Academy of Sciences, and it's
1:39:11
Speaker 1: almost playful. It's oversized. It's almost like a caricature of Einstein.
1:39:16
Speaker 1: He looks exactly the way you want him to look.
1:39:18
Speaker 1: The hair is everywhere, it's frazzled, right, and that's what
1:39:23
Speaker 1: makes it so much fun. And it was buried behind
1:39:25
Speaker 1: bushes for a long time when I was in college,
1:39:28
Speaker 1: so nobody even you couldn't see it from the road,
1:39:30
Speaker 1: you couldn't see from street. Now you can actually see
1:39:32
Speaker 1: it from Constitution Avenue. It's not you can see it.
1:39:34
Speaker 1: You don't accidentally walk by it as a tourist and
1:39:36
Speaker 1: miss it. Tourists stood just miss it left and right.
1:39:39
Speaker 1: They might get off at Foggy Bottom, start walking towards
1:39:41
Speaker 1: the National Mall and literally be walking next to it
1:39:44
Speaker 1: and not see it. They finally towards these bushes down,
1:39:47
Speaker 1: but I kind of wish they hadn't. Let's just say,
1:39:49
Speaker 1: in college it was a great place to hang out.
1:39:52
Speaker 1: I'll let you decide what you did at the Einstein
1:39:55
Speaker 1: Memorial after midnight when you were in college, but nobody
1:39:59
Speaker 1: saw you. It was one of a fun little place
1:40:01
Speaker 1: to I always thought of it as a really great
1:40:04
Speaker 1: secret and to this day, kids can climate, adults take pictures,
1:40:08
Speaker 1: people sit and linger. It's exactly frankly, it's exactly what
1:40:12
Speaker 1: you would envision what Einstein would have wanted a memorial
1:40:14
Speaker 1: to him to be. And of course it's something a
1:40:19
Speaker 1: little bit different, right. You're used to everything being so
1:40:21
Speaker 1: somber about Washington, and this is a playful memorial, if
1:40:25
Speaker 1: you will, And it's a memorial not to power, not politics,
1:40:29
Speaker 1: but ideas. Number three on my list is Arlington Cemetery.
1:40:34
Speaker 1: Some of you may argue this should be higher. Maybe
1:40:37
Speaker 1: you're right. I find it to be an incredibly What
1:40:41
Speaker 1: I find interesting about it is not just the two
1:40:44
Speaker 1: or three must see that people go, the Tomb of
1:40:47
Speaker 1: the Unknown or the Kennedy Flame. It's kind of the
1:40:53
Speaker 1: accidental history that you run into at Arlington Cemetery. And
1:40:58
Speaker 1: what do I mean by Arlington Cemetery Because you know,
1:41:05
Speaker 1: like you could go to section sixty where right, you know,
1:41:07
Speaker 1: which is where the most recent fallman get buried, and
1:41:11
Speaker 1: you look at the dates and you start to see,
1:41:13
Speaker 1: oh that's Afghanistan. Oh that's a rack, Oh that's you know,
1:41:16
Speaker 1: they line up right and you and it makes it,
1:41:20
Speaker 1: It makes it real. Or you can go deep in
1:41:22
Speaker 1: our history. There's another you know, people go for the
1:41:24
Speaker 1: Kennedy flame, but there's also the only president to serve
1:41:29
Speaker 1: on the Supreme Court, William Howard Daft is buried at Arlington.
1:41:34
Speaker 1: There's this one section of Arlington and I remember when
1:41:37
Speaker 1: I went to visit Kennedy, I was like, Hey, what's
1:41:38
Speaker 1: this section And it just turned out to be the
1:41:41
Speaker 1: It was a section that had been where you know,
1:41:44
Speaker 1: basically the more prominent people could could get buried there
1:41:48
Speaker 1: if they chose to, and you certainly had this entire
1:41:53
Speaker 1: section of notable people. Robert McNamara, the former Defense secretary
1:41:57
Speaker 1: or in the Vietnam era, is buried there. Robert Todd
1:42:00
Speaker 1: Lincoln is in section thirty. He's the only son of
1:42:05
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln to survive into adulthood. He of course was
1:42:10
Speaker 1: witnessed the shootings of Garfield and was in the city
1:42:14
Speaker 1: of Buffalo when McKinley was shot, and of course was
1:42:17
Speaker 1: at his dad's bedside. A weirdly unique sort of forced
1:42:21
Speaker 1: Gump type of history. George Marshall is buried at Arlington,
1:42:26
Speaker 1: La font who was one of the designers of Washington
1:42:30
Speaker 1: d C. Well, he's buried in Arlington Cemetery, So there's
1:42:35
Speaker 1: a lot of history in Arlington Cemetery that isn't just
1:42:39
Speaker 1: the one or two landmarks people say have to become destinations.
1:42:44
Speaker 1: It's someplace that I think you can get lost. It's
1:42:47
Speaker 1: a great walk, it's an exercise. It's pretty hilly. There's
1:42:52
Speaker 1: definitely a lot of walking. But you know, it's funny.
1:42:59
Speaker 1: You will leave our Arlington feeling smaller than when you arrive.
1:43:03
Speaker 1: But in some ways that makes you feel good. Number
1:43:06
Speaker 1: two of my list is Korean War Memorial. I honestly
1:43:09
Speaker 1: think this is the most underrated memorial in Washington. Nobody
1:43:11
Speaker 1: comes to town to say, well, I've got to see
1:43:13
Speaker 1: the Korean War Memorial. But then they get there and
1:43:16
Speaker 1: suddenly they're standing among those soldiers that are moving through
1:43:18
Speaker 1: this field. The expression on the face is the sense
1:43:22
Speaker 1: of motion that this memorial gives, the feeling that you're
1:43:26
Speaker 1: not looking at history, but you're actually walking through it.
1:43:29
Speaker 1: You get just a small sense of what kind of
1:43:32
Speaker 1: war it was in Korea. You're like kind of walking
1:43:36
Speaker 1: walking in these rice patties, and it's it at night.
1:43:42
Speaker 1: It's very haunted. And what's interesting, whenever I've taken people there,
1:43:48
Speaker 1: they don't really they're like, oh, yeah, I forgot we
1:43:50
Speaker 1: did something on Korea. And then they go there and
1:43:54
Speaker 1: they linger a lot longer than they ever thought they would,
1:43:57
Speaker 1: and it leaves a deeper impression. It's funny. It's the
1:44:01
Speaker 1: success of the to me of the Korean War Memorial
1:44:04
Speaker 1: and sort of doing what you want a memorial to do,
1:44:07
Speaker 1: to make people think a little bit longer about something
1:44:09
Speaker 1: that they maybe perhaps had, really sort of showcases the
1:44:15
Speaker 1: emptiness that I think la mall has when it comes
1:44:18
Speaker 1: to World War One, which is why I singled out
1:44:20
Speaker 1: the DC Memorial on that one. And of course it
1:44:23
Speaker 1: brings me to number one because it's the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
1:44:26
Speaker 1: To me, it's close, it's close to being the most
1:44:29
Speaker 1: perfect memorial ever come up, ever to have anybody come up.
1:44:32
Speaker 1: It's not just a war memorial, it's simply a memorial, right.
1:44:37
Speaker 1: And here's my advice if you visit, don't just look
1:44:40
Speaker 1: at the wall. Find and it is. Find somebody. If
1:44:44
Speaker 1: it's not you who's looking for a name, find somebody
1:44:48
Speaker 1: who's making an etching. Right. When they find the name
1:44:51
Speaker 1: that they're looking for, strike up a conversation. Ask them
1:44:56
Speaker 1: to tell you their story. Because that's the amazing thing
1:44:59
Speaker 1: about the Vietnam War Omriols that everybody who visits comes
1:45:03
Speaker 1: there intentionally and there's a story that they want to tell.
1:45:07
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a story to tell their son or daughter,
1:45:10
Speaker 1: maybe it's a story that they just want to remember
1:45:14
Speaker 1: about a sibling, about a parent. But everybody there is
1:45:18
Speaker 1: their own tour guide and they will happily tell you
1:45:23
Speaker 1: their story. But it is a remarkable thing when you
1:45:27
Speaker 1: go and visit and you see people getting the etchings.
1:45:29
Speaker 1: It's just everybody that visits has a connection. Everybody has
1:45:34
Speaker 1: a reason. It's if a memorial can be quote unquote successful,
1:45:43
Speaker 1: well then this one is wildly successful. It does what
1:45:48
Speaker 1: you want a memorial to do. It makes you remember,
1:45:51
Speaker 1: it makes you think, makes you contemplate, and it certainly
1:45:57
Speaker 1: is going to if you walk away with dry eyes,
1:46:01
Speaker 1: that I question your own personal humanity. But it is
1:46:06
Speaker 1: an amazing memorial. So look, while you're doing all that,
1:46:10
Speaker 1: you may run into the reflecting pool. You may run
1:46:13
Speaker 1: into the Lincoln Memorial, you may run into the World
1:46:15
Speaker 1: War Two memorial, you may run into the Washington Monument.
1:46:18
Speaker 1: Those are all fine memorials, and there's certainly plenty of
1:46:22
Speaker 1: postcards of those memorials. Do my tour guide, do my five,
1:46:29
Speaker 1: do that top five. If that's your day in Washington,
1:46:32
Speaker 1: that's your one day, and you can set aside an
1:46:34
Speaker 1: entire day. It's a nine am to a five pm day,
1:46:38
Speaker 1: all right, then you will have seen the Washington memorials
1:46:42
Speaker 1: that I think had the biggest impact and provide you
1:46:47
Speaker 1: with the richest stories and visuals to take home and
1:46:51
Speaker 1: pass on to your friends and family. So I don't
1:46:57
Speaker 1: know what Trump's going to keep going to the reflecting
1:46:59
Speaker 1: pool and you just want to photo op for July Foard.
1:47:03
Speaker 1: But these memorials belong to all of us, So get
1:47:07
Speaker 1: out there and enjoy them. And if you're looking for
1:47:09
Speaker 1: a if you're looking for a guide, I can't always
1:47:12
Speaker 1: I can't guarantee that I'll be there, but at least
1:47:15
Speaker 1: I can leave you my top five list and you
1:47:18
Speaker 1: can play it as you go along. All right, let's
1:47:20
Speaker 1: do some questions. I figured that was the top five
1:47:26
Speaker 1: list you could use to catch a reflecting pole algorithm, right, Yes,
1:47:34
Speaker 1: like it's a that's why. That's why I thought it
1:47:38
Speaker 1: would be a I thought it would be a doable way.
1:47:42
Speaker 1: And I wanted something. I wanted something a little different,
1:47:44
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, yeah, and we'll switch it up. And
1:47:51
Speaker 1: I was like, maybe I should wait a week, and
1:47:52
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, we're fucking polls now, let's do it
1:47:58
Speaker 1: because now we're fencing off the reflect people now where
1:48:00
Speaker 1: nobody can go. Yeah, you know, for we just cover
1:48:04
Speaker 1: up all of his mistakes? Can you are we just
1:48:07
Speaker 1: going to write? Are we just going to put a
1:48:09
Speaker 1: black shroud over the entire country of Iran? Can can
1:48:12
Speaker 1: we black out a map?
1:48:13
Speaker 2: Is that?
1:48:13
Speaker 1: What's going to happen next? With a sharp beat? Well,
1:48:19
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Speaker 1: last Chuck. First question comes from Jacob from Tacoma, all
1:50:56
Speaker 1: the way to Tacoma. Hello, check, big fan of your work.
1:50:59
Speaker 1: What are your thoughts on predictions that Trump might not
1:51:02
Speaker 1: finish his term? Do you see that as realistic or
1:51:04
Speaker 1: more speculation? And more broadly, how much do you think
1:51:07
Speaker 1: voter memory or lack of it could shape the mid terms?
1:51:09
Speaker 1: Thank you, Jacob, Tocoma, Washington. Well, you know I want
1:51:13
Speaker 1: to tackle both of those questions at it. The actuary
1:51:17
Speaker 1: tables are what they are. His health is what it is.
1:51:21
Speaker 1: He does not seem healthy. This is a job that
1:51:24
Speaker 1: is filled with stress. It ages everybody the health. The
1:51:28
Speaker 1: last two of our healthiest presidents were Barack Obama and
1:51:32
Speaker 1: George W. Bush. These guys were sets of treadmill guys
1:51:35
Speaker 1: and all of this shudd They had a couple of
1:51:36
Speaker 1: vices that they were both overcoming over the years. You know,
1:51:39
Speaker 1: Bush was overcoming alcoholism. He wasn't drinking obviously when he
1:51:43
Speaker 1: was president, and Obama was trying to stop smoking constantly.
1:51:48
Speaker 1: And he is the nicorette teeth to prove it type
1:51:52
Speaker 1: of thing. But beyond that, they led very healthy lives
1:51:56
Speaker 1: and they tried to stay in shape. And guess what,
1:52:00
Speaker 1: the gray hair came for them too. So the point
1:52:03
Speaker 1: is Donald Trump doesn't have any workout routines, doesn't eat
1:52:07
Speaker 1: very healthy, clearly has had some health issues that are
1:52:13
Speaker 1: impacting him. He doesn't stand very long. It's very hard
1:52:17
Speaker 1: for him to have standing events. You see almost constantly
1:52:20
Speaker 1: now his photo ops are seated. It was rare. The
1:52:23
Speaker 1: other day we saw him with the full new the umbrella.
1:52:25
Speaker 1: So you're asking me a question that I'm not his doctor,
1:52:28
Speaker 1: None of us are. And you know, once you hit eighty,
1:52:31
Speaker 1: he's eighty. Now, you know this is once you're eighty.
1:52:40
Speaker 1: You know when you see that in an obituary, the
1:52:42
Speaker 1: first thing in your head is never too soon, right,
1:52:45
Speaker 1: You're always like, oh, they lived a full life. Eighty
1:52:47
Speaker 1: is the beginning of they lived a full life. In fact,
1:52:51
Speaker 1: I think that is something that has changed from the
1:52:53
Speaker 1: seventies to the eighties. You know, I say this is
1:52:55
Speaker 1: somebody in their fifties. I can tell you now, when
1:52:57
Speaker 1: somebody dies in their fifties or sixties, the first thing
1:52:59
Speaker 1: you years, well, that's too soon. And I think more
1:53:02
Speaker 1: and more now you're seeing that with people that pass
1:53:05
Speaker 1: away in their seventies eighty is I think the consensus
1:53:07
Speaker 1: where nobody's going to disagree. Oh, that's not that you
1:53:10
Speaker 1: didn't get a chance to live your full your full life,
1:53:13
Speaker 1: there's that doesn't mean you're not sad. You know, I've
1:53:17
Speaker 1: spent some time earlier this podcast talking to you about
1:53:20
Speaker 1: my friend Alan Greenspan, by the way, you know, a
1:53:23
Speaker 1: friendship that didn't begin until he was eighty five, and
1:53:27
Speaker 1: I was I was in my early forties. But that
1:53:34
Speaker 1: doesn't make me any less sad than I know he
1:53:38
Speaker 1: got to live a full life. I'm still sad. My
1:53:40
Speaker 1: grandmother died in ninety night. So't I don't want you
1:53:42
Speaker 1: to I don't want people to read in anything I
1:53:44
Speaker 1: just said about Yeah, but but let's be realistic when
1:53:48
Speaker 1: you see that, right. So the point being is, at
1:53:50
Speaker 1: this point, you know, it's it's up to mother nature
1:53:56
Speaker 1: and actuary tables. I don't think. I mean, if you
1:54:00
Speaker 1: want to get nefarious here, there is a if he
1:54:05
Speaker 1: were really trying to gain the constitution and wanted to
1:54:09
Speaker 1: figure out how to essentially get a third term, well
1:54:14
Speaker 1: then there is you know, there is some bizarre path
1:54:22
Speaker 1: he could take, which would involve resigning before the mid terms,
1:54:28
Speaker 1: after the election, but before the new Congress is worn in,
1:54:31
Speaker 1: and he would have to get confirmed as the sitting
1:54:33
Speaker 1: vice president by then. Anyway, there is a and I'm
1:54:38
Speaker 1: not sure it's constitutional, but I it's the loop. It's
1:54:42
Speaker 1: a one loophole that I could see someone to trying
1:54:45
Speaker 1: to exploit. But it would involve him having to resign
1:54:48
Speaker 1: the presidency and getting reappointed as vice president, then running
1:54:52
Speaker 1: as the sitting vice president, essentially not being the puppet
1:54:57
Speaker 1: master to the sitting president. Now, I think the problem
1:55:01
Speaker 1: with that idea is one you have to assume two things.
1:55:05
Speaker 1: One that this current Republican Senate would confirm a vice
1:55:08
Speaker 1: President Trump, and two that a president Dvance would take
1:55:14
Speaker 1: orders from a vice President Trump. But if you're asking
1:55:18
Speaker 1: me if he was trying to find a path to
1:55:21
Speaker 1: running for a one more term, the only one that
1:55:25
Speaker 1: would have a big leaf of constitutionality to it would
1:55:28
Speaker 1: only be if he resigned before serving the halfway mark
1:55:33
Speaker 1: of this term. Then I guess you could make the
1:55:36
Speaker 1: case that he's kind of in the hasn't served his
1:55:38
Speaker 1: six and if he had assumed it as vice president.
1:55:41
Speaker 1: You know, there's that that that could be the loophole
1:55:45
Speaker 1: he would try to exploit. But the point being is,
1:55:48
Speaker 1: I don't there's no other reason for him to resign,
1:55:53
Speaker 1: so to me, he you know, unless he were trying
1:55:56
Speaker 1: to do this convoluted way to keep himself as a
1:55:59
Speaker 1: viabletential nominees for twenty eight I don't see resignation on
1:56:03
Speaker 1: the table. I don't see impeachment. So the only one
1:56:05
Speaker 1: of the way he leaves office early is if Mother
1:56:08
Speaker 1: Nature comes calm so his health is is how I
1:56:15
Speaker 1: think that, you know, in the circumstances that it happened,
1:56:21
Speaker 1: would probably impact what the political reaction would be. You know,
1:56:28
Speaker 1: natural causes versus unnatural causes are two very different ways
1:56:31
Speaker 1: that the public might react to something like this. So
1:56:36
Speaker 1: that's why it's such a It's probably an impossible thing
1:56:41
Speaker 1: to try to speculate about because there's just there's there's
1:56:46
Speaker 1: there's no simulating a lived experience and how and how
1:56:51
Speaker 1: reaction would be like you know, this is this is
1:56:54
Speaker 1: why AI is never going to replace this. There's there's
1:56:56
Speaker 1: no simulating a hypothetical until it comes from Now ask
1:57:02
Speaker 1: for your other question, because this I think I'm gonna
1:57:07
Speaker 1: I'm going to presume something here and if I'm wrong,
1:57:11
Speaker 1: let me know. And of course this is what happens
1:57:13
Speaker 1: when I ask som right, but I'm going to presume
1:57:16
Speaker 1: that you're asking about if this economy is better in October?
1:57:21
Speaker 1: Are people going to forget how bad the economy was
1:57:24
Speaker 1: for them?
1:57:25
Speaker 2: This?
1:57:25
Speaker 1: You know, this sort of this economy which is terrible
1:57:28
Speaker 1: if you don't have money, but pretty good if you
1:57:31
Speaker 1: do have the ability to handle the inflation crystalism. I
1:57:38
Speaker 1: delved into this, which is it? You know, if gas
1:57:46
Speaker 1: is down to three dollars a gallon in October? Will
1:57:50
Speaker 1: that help things? And the thing is is I think
1:57:53
Speaker 1: the problem that Trump has here and why I don't
1:57:57
Speaker 1: think the public is going to forget this is that
1:58:00
Speaker 1: he intent. You know, he really manipulated this economy. He
1:58:04
Speaker 1: bent this economy to his will, right, he tariff he
1:58:07
Speaker 1: created this tariff war, which had a huge impact on inflation. Obviously,
1:58:15
Speaker 1: the decision to go to war with Iran and handing
1:58:17
Speaker 1: the straight of horm mood control of the straight of
1:58:19
Speaker 1: horm moods to the Iranians really had a huge impact
1:58:22
Speaker 1: on the negative impact on the economy. And so his
1:58:26
Speaker 1: fingerprints are on it. You know, I think that he
1:58:29
Speaker 1: would recover faster if it were sort of outside events,
1:58:34
Speaker 1: and there was a sense that, well, you know, and
1:58:36
Speaker 1: voters assumed he'd But because his fingerprints are all over
1:58:39
Speaker 1: the sort of messy economy that working people feel like
1:58:44
Speaker 1: the working people are experiencing, I don't think this goes
1:58:49
Speaker 1: away right away. And the other thing is he won't
1:58:52
Speaker 1: let it go right away. You know, he's going to
1:58:54
Speaker 1: try to memory hold it on. But is Iran going
1:58:59
Speaker 1: to let him right? That's number one. And I'm just
1:59:06
Speaker 1: you know, I'm just not convinced everything's going to bounce
1:59:09
Speaker 1: back as fast as he thinks sins. I know, our
1:59:14
Speaker 1: economy has been remarkably resilient, but this is still economy
1:59:17
Speaker 1: that is mostly humming on the consumption of the top
1:59:22
Speaker 1: ten to fifteen percent in this economy, the bottom seven eighty,
1:59:27
Speaker 1: seventy to eighty percent, they're struggling to make ends meet.
1:59:31
Speaker 1: I don't see how that improves between now and October.
1:59:36
Speaker 1: So anyway I make I made the assumption, Jacob, that
1:59:39
Speaker 1: you were asking kind of that economic question. All right,
1:59:43
Speaker 1: Daryl writes, and he says, hey, you answer your answer.
1:59:46
Speaker 1: I got to know an answered made me think of
1:59:49
Speaker 1: the big Lebowski, the idea that quote there's a man
1:59:51
Speaker 1: for every time in place? Ah, this is about history.
1:59:53
Speaker 1: Does a history make that man?
1:59:55
Speaker 2: Erses?
1:59:55
Speaker 1: Man make the history? Do you think certain political figures
1:59:58
Speaker 1: rise because they reflect where the country is at a
2:00:00
Speaker 1: given moment, rather than shaping it themselves. Curious how much
2:00:02
Speaker 1: you think leaders mirror the public versus lead it. Look,
2:00:05
Speaker 1: I think I think our politics are always the result
2:00:15
Speaker 1: of the inputs of the electorate. Right. It is a
2:00:20
Speaker 1: reflection sometimes of who we want to be. I think
2:00:25
Speaker 1: the election of Obama was sort of like, yeah, we
2:00:30
Speaker 1: are different here, and we're going to make sure you know.
2:00:32
Speaker 1: No other Western democracy would have elected it somebody from
2:00:36
Speaker 1: its largest minority in its country to the presidency. Wouldn't
2:00:39
Speaker 1: have happened in the UK, wouldn't have happen in France, Okay,
2:00:44
Speaker 1: But the only country I could go and say that
2:00:46
Speaker 1: it's done in a democracy where they elected a minority president.
2:00:50
Speaker 1: You can make a case in Peru when they elected
2:00:53
Speaker 1: somebody of Japanese descent, But for the most part, right
2:00:59
Speaker 1: what America did know it was incredibly unique for a
2:01:01
Speaker 1: Western democracy. Again, ask yourself, uh, you know, perhaps perhaps
2:01:17
Speaker 1: the UK could do it, and you could say, you know,
2:01:20
Speaker 1: depending on its parliamentary system, but in those that truly
2:01:24
Speaker 1: have national actions. So anyway, sometimes we're an aspirational electorate
2:01:32
Speaker 1: and sometimes we're a transactional electorate. Right, Sometimes it's your
2:01:39
Speaker 1: station in life that determines whether you're going to vote
2:01:42
Speaker 1: aspirationally or transactional. I as i've as, I accept the
2:01:51
Speaker 1: premise that I have the luxury to worry about aspirations
2:01:57
Speaker 1: more than transactions in the current situation that I'm in.
2:02:03
Speaker 1: So that's probably why I over index on character and
2:02:06
Speaker 1: I over index on frankly institutions and systems and the
2:02:10
Speaker 1: need for rule of law. But to go directly, so, yes,
2:02:19
Speaker 1: I do think I think we we should not assume
2:02:25
Speaker 1: that our presidential candidates are outliers to who we are.
2:02:31
Speaker 1: I don't believe they are, And certainly our presidents are
2:02:34
Speaker 1: representative of a big chunk of a of at least
2:02:37
Speaker 1: a big faction of our culture. In fact, you don't
2:02:45
Speaker 1: win the presidency unless you have basically a majority of
2:02:49
Speaker 1: the country or half the country seeing something of themselves
2:02:54
Speaker 1: in you, okay, whatever that is. And I think frankly,
2:02:59
Speaker 1: with losing residential candidates, it's because, right, they couldn't connect, Right,
2:03:03
Speaker 1: You've heard that connect. What that really means is does
2:03:06
Speaker 1: the voter see themselves in you in some form or
2:03:10
Speaker 1: in them? And I think it's safe to say that
2:03:14
Speaker 1: that wasn't the case, you know, with with a Hillary Clinton,
2:03:18
Speaker 1: wasn't a case with John Carey, wasn't a case with
2:03:20
Speaker 1: Mitt Romney. Right, that just weren't enough voters that saw
2:03:23
Speaker 1: that saw them themselves there, right, that whatever it was,
2:03:27
Speaker 1: it was that feeling they were just a little bit,
2:03:30
Speaker 1: a little bit over there, a little bit from another,
2:03:33
Speaker 1: another tribe, you know, not quite understanding the life I live.
2:03:40
Speaker 1: So I do. So I think when you really look
2:03:44
Speaker 1: at it, and that is that our presidents, you know,
2:03:48
Speaker 1: And that's the thing. It's a chicken and egg argument, right,
2:03:50
Speaker 1: you know, Eisenhower really fits the fifties. It's because the
2:03:54
Speaker 1: fifties were what they were, or Eisenhower was sort of.
2:03:59
Speaker 2: The certainly.
2:04:04
Speaker 1: Had the resume that met the moment, right type of thing, right,
2:04:08
Speaker 1: he was of the moment. So and you know, could
2:04:16
Speaker 1: Reagan have succeeded in the seventies or nineties, I don't know.
2:04:21
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe there's a reason he didn't get elected in
2:04:24
Speaker 1: the seventies. Maybe he was to it was, you know,
2:04:28
Speaker 1: the message didn't work in seventy six, but the message
2:04:33
Speaker 1: worked more in eighty. So I you know, and Clinton
2:04:36
Speaker 1: now feels like the like, you know, he fit the
2:04:42
Speaker 1: moment that we were in in this post Cold War
2:04:44
Speaker 1: when we were trying to basically get out from under
2:04:47
Speaker 1: our parents, right, you know, the Cold War generation felt
2:04:51
Speaker 1: like it was our parents and grandparents running things and
2:04:53
Speaker 1: it was like it was time for the next generation
2:04:55
Speaker 1: to run things. So yeah, I think I I tend
2:05:01
Speaker 1: to believe that the reason and again I know that
2:05:05
Speaker 1: we recency biased historian types can do this, which is
2:05:09
Speaker 1: we can conflate the culture and the president in that time,
2:05:14
Speaker 1: you know, and almost have confirmation biased about it, where
2:05:19
Speaker 1: we know what the culture was, so we look for
2:05:21
Speaker 1: it in those presidents. And I'm not denying that doesn't happen,
2:05:23
Speaker 1: but I think for the most part, the presidents that
2:05:27
Speaker 1: we get are culturally, you know, essentially incubated in the
2:05:36
Speaker 1: elector in itself. I hope that helps, all right. Duwey
2:05:44
Speaker 1: from Phoenix Rights, he goes new Dad here a man, congrats.
2:05:49
Speaker 1: It's a whole different ballgame. Sleep. I mean, once you
2:05:56
Speaker 1: have a kid, sleep becomes more important than sex. And
2:06:01
Speaker 1: I know that that's gonna but I will just I
2:06:03
Speaker 1: promise you the biggest difference between having a kid and
2:06:06
Speaker 1: not having a kid is that is suddenly everything in
2:06:12
Speaker 1: your life is about finding ten minutes to take a
2:06:14
Speaker 1: nap and finding a quick chance to rest. Before you
2:06:18
Speaker 1: have a kid. At least for some people, your mind
2:06:20
Speaker 1: wanders and you're always wondering when am I gonna, you know,
2:06:23
Speaker 1: have sex? Next type of thing that goes out the
2:06:27
Speaker 1: window when your dad there, there's some, there's some. There's
2:06:30
Speaker 1: a truth bomb for you it Maybe you wouldn't have
2:06:33
Speaker 1: heard him meet the press anyway, K your dad here.
2:06:35
Speaker 1: Appreciate the early episode drops during late night diaper duty.
2:06:39
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed your conversation with Paul Taylor and had
2:06:41
Speaker 1: a question about generational mindset. Looking back to George W.
2:06:44
Speaker 1: Bush's post nine to eleven message, encouraging Americans to keep consuming,
2:06:47
Speaker 1: reflect something broader about the boomer generation, or am I
2:06:50
Speaker 1: reading too much into that moment? Thanks for all you do,
2:06:53
Speaker 1: drew a Phoenix, Arizona hippos a little uh little if
2:06:57
Speaker 1: you know, you know, with the hippos and GW there
2:06:59
Speaker 1: there's he that's an interesting I don't know if I'd
2:07:03
Speaker 1: go that far. I mean, I think Bush at the
2:07:07
Speaker 1: time was simply saying what quoting economists. You know, the
2:07:12
Speaker 1: economists are saying, well, the longest consumer confidence days up,
2:07:14
Speaker 1: the economy is going to be fine. So hence go shopping, right,
2:07:18
Speaker 1: what's the best thing you could do for the you know.
2:07:20
Speaker 1: And the fact is it was an inelegant message, but
2:07:24
Speaker 1: he was right, you know, And thank goodness for this
2:07:29
Speaker 1: powerful consumer. The consumer has kept our economy afloat for
2:07:33
Speaker 1: some time, and we're counting on the consumer to prevent
2:07:36
Speaker 1: a recession yet again. I mean, Donald Trump is counting
2:07:39
Speaker 1: on the wealthy consumer to prevent a recession this time around. No,
2:07:46
Speaker 1: but I do think so. I had a reader send
2:07:50
Speaker 1: me and I've seen this before. It is something that
2:08:00
Speaker 1: out by the name of Abraham Maslow came up with
2:08:02
Speaker 1: the hierarchy of needs right, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and
2:08:06
Speaker 1: the idea is, once you have one need fulfilled, then
2:08:08
Speaker 1: you go to the next level needing that so your
2:08:13
Speaker 1: base needs and it's he had a pyramid of this, right.
2:08:16
Speaker 1: And the base needs are physiological essentially survival needs, breathing, food, water, shelter, clothing, sleep.
2:08:23
Speaker 1: Then the next set of needs become once you have
2:08:25
Speaker 1: those basic survival needs, then it becomes safety and security, health, employment, property, family,
2:08:30
Speaker 1: social stability. Once you have that, then the next set
2:08:34
Speaker 1: of needs love and belonging, friendship, family, intimacy, sense of connection.
2:08:38
Speaker 1: Then once you have that, the next need becomes self esteem, confidence, achievement, respective,
2:08:43
Speaker 1: others need to be unique individual right. And then the
2:08:46
Speaker 1: last one is self actualization, morality, creativity, spontaneity, acceptance, experience,
2:08:53
Speaker 1: purpose meaning inner potential. And I think about that as
2:09:01
Speaker 1: I get it right. Once you once you've fulfilled one
2:09:05
Speaker 1: set of needs, then you're disappointed that you don't. Rather
2:09:09
Speaker 1: than being satisfied that you have accomplished something, you're instead
2:09:17
Speaker 1: wishing you had more. And the more is the next
2:09:20
Speaker 1: set of needs.
2:09:20
Speaker 2: Right.
2:09:20
Speaker 1: And then some people they can never they never find
2:09:24
Speaker 1: they never find their satisfaction and in some ways, I
2:09:29
Speaker 1: feel like that that's been the case with the boomers, right.
2:09:32
Speaker 1: The boomers keep getting, keep succeeding, you know, whether it's
2:09:39
Speaker 1: it is in accumulating wealth, investment savings, making sure there's retirement,
2:09:44
Speaker 1: all this stuff. And yet there's this belief, well, they've
2:09:49
Speaker 1: always wanted more and more and more, and it's always
2:09:52
Speaker 1: been demanding more of government, more of government. And that's
2:09:55
Speaker 1: the other question is democracy. At some point there's only
2:09:58
Speaker 1: you know, once, once you provided one set of safety nets,
2:10:04
Speaker 1: then you start to see, well, we should be able
2:10:07
Speaker 1: to provide this. Why can't you know, as you get
2:10:08
Speaker 1: wealthier and wealthier, then suddenly the opportunity to solve more
2:10:12
Speaker 1: problems seems viable. Then all of a sudden you're proposing,
2:10:18
Speaker 1: you know, bigger and bigger governmental ideas. Anyway, I throw
2:10:23
Speaker 1: that in there, and I sort of I just throw
2:10:27
Speaker 1: it out there as a as almost like a question
2:10:31
Speaker 1: back at you, Drew, which is with the boomers, which
2:10:36
Speaker 1: is sort of we need to we need to find
2:10:39
Speaker 1: our There are people in my life that are unhappy
2:10:44
Speaker 1: and I think they have great lives and I don't
2:10:46
Speaker 1: know why they can't find happiness. And it's this you
2:10:50
Speaker 1: know they need something more. Right, They've got all this
2:10:53
Speaker 1: other they've got their they've got their survival needs, they've
2:10:58
Speaker 1: got maybe a terrific family, right, but they're still not satisfied.
2:11:02
Speaker 1: And you're like, how come you can't get this sense
2:11:04
Speaker 1: of satisfaction? And it does feel like our political system
2:11:08
Speaker 1: is that way. You know, you could make an argument,
2:11:11
Speaker 1: my goodness, we're doing really well and we should be
2:11:14
Speaker 1: satisfied with how much we are able to do. And
2:11:17
Speaker 1: you know, the World Cup visitors who are just in
2:11:20
Speaker 1: awe of what America has. Maybe is that reminder for
2:11:24
Speaker 1: all of us that, you know, for as much bitchin
2:11:26
Speaker 1: and moaning as we do about things, we're doing really
2:11:29
Speaker 1: well compared to the rest of the world, and we
2:11:32
Speaker 1: have a lot more compared to the rest of the
2:11:34
Speaker 1: world and our you know art for instance. You know,
2:11:38
Speaker 1: this was one of those stats people didn't believe, but
2:11:41
Speaker 1: now that you see of the way World Cup visitors
2:11:43
Speaker 1: are reacting. Essentially, Mississippi has a higher standard of living
2:11:46
Speaker 1: than I think both Japan and the UK, and that
2:11:51
Speaker 1: is how well America is doing compared to the rest
2:11:54
Speaker 1: of the world. Right, It's one of the places that
2:11:56
Speaker 1: have our lowest standard of living in the fifty States
2:12:00
Speaker 1: would still be in the among the highest standards of
2:12:03
Speaker 1: living in Europe or in Asia. And that's a that's
2:12:10
Speaker 1: something that we don't fully appreciate.
2:12:12
Speaker 2: Now.
2:12:12
Speaker 1: I know I'm gonna sound like an old man. You
2:12:14
Speaker 1: need to appreciate what you have, not keep bitching about
2:12:16
Speaker 1: what you don't. But some you know, politicians have to
2:12:21
Speaker 1: figure out how to win an election, and nobody's figured
2:12:23
Speaker 1: out how to win an election by promising to do less.
2:12:27
Speaker 1: When that happens, wakeman. Next question comes from Chris from Roscoe, Illinois,
2:12:41
Speaker 1: Illinois sixteen. I love it. Can you include the district number?
2:12:43
Speaker 1: Thank you for doing that, Chris, you get the gold
2:12:45
Speaker 1: star for the day. I'd like to see more of
2:12:47
Speaker 1: my readers do this. Tell me your congressional district. Uh
2:12:51
Speaker 1: and by the way, you say possible third time or
2:12:53
Speaker 1: here from Roscoe, Illinois. We'll go to the record books,
2:12:56
Speaker 1: we'll make we'll find out what they tell us.
2:12:59
Speaker 2: He goes.
2:12:59
Speaker 1: I know each admitted station has what would be considered
2:13:01
Speaker 1: a blunder or mistake that defines their time in office.
2:13:03
Speaker 1: But Trump's Iron War and the concession loaded MoU to
2:13:07
Speaker 1: possibly start negotiations have got to rank up there. Where
2:13:10
Speaker 1: would you rank this obvious miscalculation against other presidential mistakes
2:13:14
Speaker 1: throughout the history of this country. So it's interesting. I
2:13:20
Speaker 1: contemplated a top five list on this, and in fairness,
2:13:23
Speaker 1: it's not over yet, So I'm going to we technically
2:13:26
Speaker 1: should withhold judgment of Iran, you know, I'm not. I
2:13:35
Speaker 1: don't know if we know for sure whether Iran is
2:13:39
Speaker 1: a bigger blunder than Iraq. Yeah, right, just like look,
2:13:46
Speaker 1: Iraq is still sort of holding together as a fledgling democracy.
2:13:52
Speaker 1: But it's clear the war wasn't worth, you know, it
2:13:56
Speaker 1: just wasn't worth the price we had to pay for it. Anyway,
2:14:01
Speaker 1: I throw that those caveats out there because I think
2:14:03
Speaker 1: you you know, you have to and I think the
2:14:09
Speaker 1: question is what are the mist like what are mistakes? Right?
2:14:13
Speaker 1: There's political mistakes because of when you try to do something,
2:14:19
Speaker 1: not whether you should do something right. And so to
2:14:22
Speaker 1: come up with this list, I don't I don't want
2:14:25
Speaker 1: to include like Bill Clinton tackling healthcare the wrong way
2:14:28
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety three and ninety four. It was a
2:14:31
Speaker 1: political blunder. How they went about it was a blunder,
2:14:36
Speaker 1: But you could argue, had they not gone and down
2:14:40
Speaker 1: that path of figuring out how not to do it,
2:14:44
Speaker 1: there wouldn't have been the path that Obama chose to
2:14:47
Speaker 1: do it. So so I guess let's start with this.
2:14:56
Speaker 1: There's blunders that cost you an election, cost you reelection.
2:15:13
Speaker 1: I mean, look, Trump's management of COVID is why he
2:15:15
Speaker 1: didn't win in twenty twenty. His oversight. Now here's the
2:15:23
Speaker 1: irony to Trump one point zero and the COVID mistake
2:15:27
Speaker 1: is thankfully he hadn't yet purged the government of its experts.
2:15:32
Speaker 1: You still had people like Deborah Brooks and Tony Fauci
2:15:35
Speaker 1: who knew what they were doing. You had a Mike
2:15:37
Speaker 1: Pence who took his job very seriously and working with
2:15:40
Speaker 1: the governors and doing coordination. You had General Perna who
2:15:44
Speaker 1: was doing logistics. But Trump's leadership was horrendous. Luckily, the
2:15:53
Speaker 1: government itself had enough competent people that it wasn't a
2:15:57
Speaker 1: colossal disaster. We got a vaccine quickly and all that stuff.
2:16:02
Speaker 1: So but I think that's a blunder that might belong
2:16:05
Speaker 1: the top five. Who do you blame for Vietnam? Kennedy
2:16:14
Speaker 1: or Johnson right? Who sent the first advisors Kennedy did,
2:16:19
Speaker 1: who escalated Johnson did? Is it a Macnamara? But you know, Vietnam,
2:16:27
Speaker 1: it is, It is hard. It is hard to find.
2:16:36
Speaker 1: It is hard to find something like that. Was Katrina
2:16:41
Speaker 1: a blunder or was the system overwhelmed and it was
2:16:44
Speaker 1: bad management? You see why this gets really hard, right,
2:16:49
Speaker 1: The point being, here's what gets really hard. It's really
2:16:52
Speaker 1: hard for me to find one as bad as a run.
2:17:01
Speaker 1: It's clear Vietnam was a mistake, and then the amount
2:17:06
Speaker 1: of lives lost. I still think you have to keep
2:17:09
Speaker 1: Vietnam ahead of Iran. And again I don't know whether
2:17:16
Speaker 1: you put Iran ahead of Iraq yet. Right, let's see
2:17:18
Speaker 1: how the MU turns out. Let's see what Let's see
2:17:21
Speaker 1: where Iran is in a year. You know, Syria falling
2:17:27
Speaker 1: last year, when Assad finally fell, there was a reminder
2:17:32
Speaker 1: that you know, there were a lot of people that
2:17:33
Speaker 1: looked like they had failed in dealing with Asad, who
2:17:40
Speaker 1: arguably all get a little bit of credit in finally
2:17:43
Speaker 1: creating the conditions that drove us OD out right, So
2:17:51
Speaker 1: you know, this is why I think this becomes it,
2:17:54
Speaker 1: This becomes a harder exercise the more the more I
2:17:58
Speaker 1: try to do it accurately right and separating out like
2:18:03
Speaker 1: I said, political blunders, which are usually mistakes of timing
2:18:07
Speaker 1: or mistakes of messaging, versus things that just separate like
2:18:11
Speaker 1: in turning, like the Japanese in tournament camp. That's just
2:18:14
Speaker 1: a colossal, terrible thing to unhappen, heart stop period. So
2:18:27
Speaker 1: but they weren't. But FDR was never politically punished for it, right,
2:18:32
Speaker 1: So it is. It's interesting sometimes where if you don't
2:18:36
Speaker 1: pay a price with your job or with the voters
2:18:40
Speaker 1: in some way, no matter how big the blunder is,
2:18:43
Speaker 1: it doesn't ever seem as big as when the blunder
2:18:48
Speaker 1: costs you an actual election or costs you political power.
2:18:53
Speaker 1: Now maybe that's on us for how we're judging these things,
2:18:55
Speaker 1: how history judges these things. And this was actually an
2:19:00
Speaker 1: interesting exercise in doing this because when you start look,
2:19:06
Speaker 1: I think what I think the long tail of this
2:19:09
Speaker 1: Saran debacle will probably make it at least the worst
2:19:13
Speaker 1: decision an American president has done it, you know, going
2:19:23
Speaker 1: back to Japanese internment. I mean, just something that just
2:19:27
Speaker 1: is going to leave us staying, is going to cost
2:19:32
Speaker 1: us long term, is going to probably cost us more
2:19:36
Speaker 1: lives down the road and fight wars we probably never
2:19:39
Speaker 1: should have had to fight that we may get stuck
2:19:41
Speaker 1: fighting now. So it's one of those potential blunders that
2:19:48
Speaker 1: will only grow in its significance. I think it's unlikely
2:19:53
Speaker 1: to retreat insignificance. But boy, to come up with a
2:20:00
Speaker 1: with all the different caveats I was making there, I
2:20:02
Speaker 1: think it to come up with what the biggest blunders are,
2:20:09
Speaker 1: you know, it's a good challenge, and I think I'm
2:20:15
Speaker 1: going to come up with the top five list of
2:20:19
Speaker 1: where Trump and try to do my best to put
2:20:21
Speaker 1: this in some sort of historical context here of where
2:20:25
Speaker 1: it ranks up to others. Just and again, I want
2:20:28
Speaker 1: to try to limit it to not political mistakes and
2:20:32
Speaker 1: messaging mistakes, but just policy decisions like this. And by
2:20:40
Speaker 1: the way, I'm not doing this alone. Send me your thoughts.
2:20:45
Speaker 1: In fact, Chris, I'm curious what blunders you were thinking
2:20:50
Speaker 1: in your head?
2:20:51
Speaker 2: Right?
2:20:51
Speaker 1: The first ones that came to mind for me or
2:20:53
Speaker 1: was warn p so it was a rock. It was Vietnam.
2:20:56
Speaker 1: So those were the first two places I went. But
2:20:59
Speaker 1: you know, you could Japanese and tournament. You know, it's
2:21:02
Speaker 1: usually our behavior enduring war that is the most questionable
2:21:06
Speaker 1: decisions that get made, But I am curious which one.
2:21:13
Speaker 1: I think think what I'll do is put together a
2:21:15
Speaker 1: list of the biggest mistakes that each president might admit
2:21:21
Speaker 1: to and go from there. All right, next question comes
2:21:27
Speaker 1: from JP and he writes, Hey, it feels like the
2:21:30
Speaker 1: last decade has been lost in terms of addressing long
2:21:33
Speaker 1: term issues. Entitlements, immigration, healthcare, education, and the deficit all
2:21:36
Speaker 1: seem unresolved. Why do you think Washington continues to avoid
2:21:39
Speaker 1: these problems and why do voters seem to accept so
2:21:41
Speaker 1: little progress? Well, JP, I think it's as simple as
2:21:45
Speaker 1: you know, when the crisis hits, that's when we deal
2:21:48
Speaker 1: with it, right we you know we didn't. We didn't
2:21:51
Speaker 1: deal with the auto companies until they needed a bailout.
2:21:55
Speaker 1: We didn't you know, we didn't deal with getting betteration
2:22:00
Speaker 1: on the financial system until it almost broke us. Right.
2:22:04
Speaker 1: I wish it were different, but this is there is
2:22:09
Speaker 1: no when you are a small de democracy and you
2:22:14
Speaker 1: are dealing with fellow human beings, you just have to
2:22:19
Speaker 1: accept the fact that you know you can try to
2:22:23
Speaker 1: come up with long term solutions to stuff that you
2:22:26
Speaker 1: know is going to be coming down the road. But
2:22:29
Speaker 1: for the most part. You're never going to get rewarded
2:22:31
Speaker 1: for voters for preventing something that hasn't happened yet, right,
2:22:37
Speaker 1: And so that's why all politicians are going to over
2:22:40
Speaker 1: index into doing things that they can show you rather
2:22:45
Speaker 1: than things that you'll be able to that your kids
2:22:48
Speaker 1: will read about in history books. Now, by the way,
2:22:54
Speaker 1: most of these problems already have the have this. There
2:22:58
Speaker 1: are three or four different ways to deal with to
2:23:02
Speaker 1: solving our current immigration issue, to dealing with entitlements, to
2:23:06
Speaker 1: dealing with healthcare, education, and the deficit. The question is
2:23:10
Speaker 1: whether we have the political will to enact any of
2:23:14
Speaker 1: the ideas. Take security. There's a simple solution to at
2:23:20
Speaker 1: least buy more time and fund Social Security, and that's
2:23:24
Speaker 1: to get rid of this Social Security tax cap. You
2:23:28
Speaker 1: lift that cap, which Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Marino, Republican
2:23:32
Speaker 1: and Democrat, co sponsored legislation to do just that. They
2:23:38
Speaker 1: Bernie Marino, a Republican from Ohio, endorsed essentially getting rid
2:23:45
Speaker 1: of that you know of you know, basically everybody gets
2:23:48
Speaker 1: taxed on the first I think it's about one hundred
2:23:50
Speaker 1: ninety eighty thousand of income, and then after that no
2:23:53
Speaker 1: more social Security taxes get collected on income essentially over
2:23:56
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand dollars. Now, people that make between two
2:24:01
Speaker 1: hundred thousand and say seven hundred thousand do not feel
2:24:04
Speaker 1: like they're rich, and they're going to be cranky about that.
2:24:07
Speaker 1: So ultimately, I bet you they create a donut hole
2:24:11
Speaker 1: which says it'll be it'll jump right. Nobody will pay
2:24:18
Speaker 1: Social Security taxes on income between two hundred and a
2:24:22
Speaker 1: million dollars a year, maybe you know joint filers, but
2:24:28
Speaker 1: then it kicks back in at a million plus, right,
2:24:31
Speaker 1: because you know what you know, if people love to
2:24:34
Speaker 1: do raise somebody else's taxes, you know what people hate
2:24:38
Speaker 1: to do raising their own taxes. And this is how
2:24:41
Speaker 1: you get bipartisanal support. The point is, the solutions are there, man,
2:24:49
Speaker 1: they're all jp. They're sitting on a shelf. The immigration,
2:24:52
Speaker 1: you know, you need one that leans a little right,
2:24:54
Speaker 1: you need one that leans a little left.
2:24:56
Speaker 2: It all exists.
2:24:58
Speaker 1: You want a perfect fifty to fifty solutions. The debt,
2:25:01
Speaker 1: it's the three percent plan, three percent, spending cuts, three percent,
2:25:04
Speaker 1: and it's across the board, defense too, and a three
2:25:06
Speaker 1: percent tax sie across the board. Right, you want to
2:25:09
Speaker 1: start dealing with that. That's how we The plans are
2:25:13
Speaker 1: not hard to come up with. It's the political will.
2:25:18
Speaker 1: So now ask yourself how many voters are going to
2:25:21
Speaker 1: vote for politicians that agree to give the voters less
2:25:28
Speaker 1: versus them voting for politicians that promise to deliver them
2:25:31
Speaker 1: more stuff. So it's the incentive system. What are you
2:25:38
Speaker 1: incentivized to do? Your INCENTIVI is to deliver stuff. The
2:25:42
Speaker 1: system does not reward you for withholding stuff pure and simple.
2:25:47
Speaker 1: So that's why we You're right, we got there. And look,
2:25:55
Speaker 1: we all know the best time to fix a roof
2:25:58
Speaker 1: is on your house is when the side shawnee, not
2:26:01
Speaker 1: when it's pouring rain. Unfortunately, when it comes to the
2:26:05
Speaker 1: United States government and our politicians, we do not fix
2:26:11
Speaker 1: a roof until it starts. All right, I'm gonna do
2:26:17
Speaker 1: two more questions in here. Michael in Dallas writes, Hey,
2:26:21
Speaker 1: with everything you juggle, travel, media, work, speaking, reading, family,
2:26:24
Speaker 1: in sports, how do you manage it all in a
2:26:25
Speaker 1: twenty four day? Any efficiency habits or routines you rely on?
2:26:28
Speaker 1: And what does your sleep schedule actually look like? Thanks
2:26:31
Speaker 1: Michael and Dallas. So the biggest thing I've done to
2:26:35
Speaker 1: manage myself is I just start early. And the number
2:26:41
Speaker 1: one thing, my number one recommendation to getting more done
2:26:45
Speaker 1: is to exercise as early as you can. Exercise early
2:26:49
Speaker 1: in the morning. I try to do it before I
2:26:51
Speaker 1: have my first cup of coffee. It doesn't always work.
2:26:54
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna sit here and say I do that
2:26:55
Speaker 1: every day, but for the most part, I try to
2:26:57
Speaker 1: do my workout first before I do anything else. That's
2:27:01
Speaker 1: where I can clear my head. But I feel like it.
2:27:07
Speaker 1: On days that I don't, I feel like I drag
2:27:11
Speaker 1: and I can never catch up. On days that I do,
2:27:15
Speaker 1: I feel like I can be ahead of the game.
2:27:17
Speaker 1: So that's one. The second is I am a I
2:27:22
Speaker 1: learned how to speed read. My father had learned how
2:27:26
Speaker 1: to speed read, and he taught me how to do it.
2:27:28
Speaker 1: And there really is a there. It is not it is.
2:27:33
Speaker 1: It is not something and you can't do with every book.
2:27:37
Speaker 1: You can't do with every article you it is, but
2:27:42
Speaker 1: I have learned how to Just the simplest way to
2:27:48
Speaker 1: explain it is reading paragraphs diagonally. That's sort of the
2:27:53
Speaker 1: visualization I can give you. It's what it was what
2:27:56
Speaker 1: worked best when my father was trying to explain how
2:27:58
Speaker 1: he did it, because he started to blow through books
2:28:00
Speaker 1: and I just like, how do you do this? And
2:28:02
Speaker 1: he says, no, I was taught how to speed rate,
2:28:05
Speaker 1: and I said, speed rate I did. I just didn't
2:28:07
Speaker 1: buy that it was a thing. And then he showed
2:28:09
Speaker 1: me how he does it, and.
2:28:13
Speaker 2: It is.
2:28:14
Speaker 1: It is a it if you know the topic or
2:28:18
Speaker 1: if you certainly the more experienced that you are reading
2:28:20
Speaker 1: certain nonfiction books. This doesn't does not work for fiction.
2:28:25
Speaker 1: Don't do not do it for fiction. But in the
2:28:28
Speaker 1: nonfiction space, whether it's magazine articles, you know, there's you
2:28:31
Speaker 1: hate to say it, there's a there's a there's a pattern, right.
2:28:35
Speaker 1: You know how people write chapters, you know how people
2:28:37
Speaker 1: write paragraphs, you know how people write sentences. Well, anyway,
2:28:41
Speaker 1: it is. It is sort of it's like your brain
2:28:44
Speaker 1: is your own AI machine, right, and you know you
2:28:46
Speaker 1: can fill in the gaps.
2:28:48
Speaker 2: So those are.
2:28:51
Speaker 1: Those are two things semi efficiency things that I would
2:28:57
Speaker 1: say that that have benefited me and have helped. But yeah,
2:29:06
Speaker 1: I mean I've always I've always been able to both
2:29:11
Speaker 1: compartmentalize and multitask in ways that outsiders might say is
2:29:19
Speaker 1: a bit sociopathic, half kidding, and I'm saying that for
2:29:24
Speaker 1: the benefit of a few of my family family members
2:29:26
Speaker 1: who are listening every once in a while it frustrates them,
2:29:29
Speaker 1: and how well I can multitask No, I was listening,
2:29:33
Speaker 1: No you weren't. Yes, you said this. There's nothing more
2:29:37
Speaker 1: frustrating than proving to somebody who thinks that you weren't listening,
2:29:40
Speaker 1: that you were listening. It's not very satisfying to you
2:29:43
Speaker 1: or them because are you really paying them attention? Right?
2:29:47
Speaker 1: That's what they're really upset about, And that's always the
2:29:50
Speaker 1: fair critique. But the point being is if I could
2:29:54
Speaker 1: give you two, right, the two pieces of advice in
2:29:58
Speaker 1: order to get more done in a day. Number one,
2:30:02
Speaker 1: just wake up an hour earlier and exercise that hour.
2:30:06
Speaker 1: The second is, if you have to do a lot
2:30:09
Speaker 1: of reading for a living, which I do, is figure
2:30:12
Speaker 1: out how to read faster. And there are certain ways
2:30:16
Speaker 1: there actually are certain tools you can get used to
2:30:19
Speaker 1: do it all. My last question goes, do you think
2:30:21
Speaker 1: it's fair to argue that Trump's leadership style can complicate
2:30:23
Speaker 1: efforts towards lasting peace, particularly in situations like iron More broadly,
2:30:27
Speaker 1: how much do you personally how much do personally and
2:30:30
Speaker 1: approach impact the ability to reach stable outcomes. Mark, you're
2:30:35
Speaker 1: asking the most important question we're about to find out.
2:30:38
Speaker 1: I mean, the fact is he's never negotiated anything successfully
2:30:43
Speaker 1: that's been durable. I mean, look at even the US
2:30:47
Speaker 1: even n AFT to two point zero or what he
2:30:48
Speaker 1: calls USMCA, it's negotiated, but he was constantly trying to
2:30:52
Speaker 1: renegg on the negotiation. So this has been a huge
2:30:57
Speaker 1: issue for him forever. The guy who wrote Art of
2:30:58
Speaker 1: the Deal doesn't know how to make a deal. And
2:31:00
Speaker 1: the minute he makes a deal, he's always looking, you know,
2:31:02
Speaker 1: to to change the deal. And that that's you're You're
2:31:08
Speaker 1: asking a question that I don't think has an answer
2:31:11
Speaker 1: at the moment, and I don't think there's a good
2:31:13
Speaker 1: answer out there. I really don't. I think that there is.
2:31:19
Speaker 1: I do fear that his personality is why you won't
2:31:25
Speaker 1: see I mean, he he doesn't know how to make
2:31:28
Speaker 1: a deal. You know, it's funny, he says, Putin and
2:31:30
Speaker 1: Zelenski don't know how to make a deal. He doesn't
2:31:33
Speaker 1: know how to get them to the table. He doesn't
2:31:36
Speaker 1: know how to do these things. The guy who's claimed
2:31:38
Speaker 1: he stopped all these wars doesn't have the first clue
2:31:40
Speaker 1: on how to do it, because if it's not about himself,
2:31:44
Speaker 1: then he's not interested. And the minute and the other
2:31:48
Speaker 1: thing is he doesn't believe in win win situations. Everybody
2:31:53
Speaker 1: has to lose. For him to win, somebody has to lose.
2:31:57
Speaker 1: So he becomes impossible to negotiate with because even if
2:32:01
Speaker 1: the deal is fair, he's going to want to shape
2:32:03
Speaker 1: it in such a way that it makes the people
2:32:05
Speaker 1: you just negotiated with say, well, f you, that is
2:32:08
Speaker 1: not what I agreed to. So I think you're we're
2:32:13
Speaker 1: about to find out.
2:32:14
Speaker 2: I don't.
2:32:16
Speaker 1: I don't think he's successfully accomplished a deal like this.
2:32:20
Speaker 1: He's not really ever ended a war. He's not negotiating.
2:32:26
Speaker 1: He knows how to rip up deals. He doesn't really
2:32:27
Speaker 1: know how to put him together.
2:32:29
Speaker 2: Right.
2:32:30
Speaker 1: NAFTA wasn't a new deal. It was just a renegotiation,
2:32:32
Speaker 1: and he just slapped down a new code of paint
2:32:34
Speaker 1: and called him USMCA. He still doesn't have a deal
2:32:37
Speaker 1: with China. We've been waiting two terms for that sucker.
2:32:41
Speaker 1: By the way, remember the deal he was going to
2:32:43
Speaker 1: do with North Korea. Whatever happened to that. He does
2:32:45
Speaker 1: not know how to do these things. So Mark, I,
2:32:49
Speaker 1: not only is it complicate efforts, we've yet to see
2:32:53
Speaker 1: it succeed once. I think that's the million dollar question.
2:33:00
Speaker 1: How much to personality and impact the ability to reach
2:33:03
Speaker 1: stable outcomes We're about to find out. I fear the
2:33:08
Speaker 1: next president is going to have a Ryan problem to
2:33:11
Speaker 1: deal with it will not. I don't expect this issue
2:33:15
Speaker 1: to be resolved during the rest of Trump's term. So
2:33:18
Speaker 1: I basically I do not expect a stable outcome here
2:33:25
Speaker 1: because the negotiator is Donald Trump. Are that we're going
2:33:30
Speaker 1: to stick a pin in this one. Appreciate you coming
2:33:33
Speaker 1: to the live stream. Huge, huge, important night in New
2:33:38
Speaker 1: York for the future of the Democratic Party and that's
2:33:42
Speaker 1: why I spent so much time on that topic up top.
2:33:44
Speaker 1: So a huge night there, plus a big night for
2:33:47
Speaker 1: the Washington Wizards. Anyway, with that, we'll put a pin
2:33:51
Speaker 1: in this and I'll see in twenty four hours